Edman degradation is a method for determining the amino acid
sequence of a peptide. Studies indicate that automatic interpretation
of sequence data derived by this method is woefully inadequate.
Manual interpretation of sequence data is time consuming, expensive,
and provides no statistical confidence estimates.
Daniel H. Wagner Associates developed
statistical algorithms and software to automatically determine
the amino acid sequence of a peptide from the experimental output
of Edman degradation. The long term goals of this research are
to provide:
- significant improvement in the accuracy of automated sequence
calling, especially for low to sub-picomole sample quantities,
- significant increase in the confidence in the identity of
residues (and number of residues) determined from later cycles,
- reliable determination of candidate sequences for a protein,
including a quantification of the confidence that each residue/candidate
sequence is correct,
- similar determination for each protein in a mixture of several
proteins sequenced simultaneously.
Software performing any significant fraction of the long-term
goals of this work would be of great importance. Protein sequencing
has important applications in fields ranging from immunology and
virology to genetics and drug design.
