New Statistical Algorithms for the Analysis of Mass - FU Berlin, FB MI ...

Chapter 2
Preliminaries
2.1 Topic Overview
This section briefly introduces the three main topics we deal with in this
thesis: Mass Spectrometry (MS) and its applications, proteomics and GRID
computing. The basic connection is as follows: Data is acquired through MSbased
technology, analyzed in a proteomics context and computed using GRID
techniques.
2.1.1 Mass Spectrometry
This section briefly introduces the general mass spectrometry (MS) technology.
As we will see below, MS comes in different flavors and each sub-type
used introduces different problems and affects some characteristics of the resulting
data. The data used and analyzed in this thesis was produced by a
MALDI-TOF MS machine and we therefore will focus on this sub-type. In the
introduction of Chapter 3 we will give more details of the MALDI-TOF MS
process and show the problems and difficulties connected to the MS technology
in general and MALDI-TOF MS in particular.
Why MS ?
Rapid growth of projects and studies in the areas of biological, clinical, pharmaceutical,
environmental and material sciences have led to dramatically increased
demands for chemical and structural information of molecules, especially
from complex systems. Mass spectrometry (MS) has become one of the
most successful and popular techniques for the analysis of a broad range of analytes.
The underlying concept is to ionize the analytes of interest followed by
separation according to their mass-to-charge ratio (m/z). Adding an optional
separation step preceding the MS step, such as gas chromatography (GC),
high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) or capillary electrophoresis
(CE), MS becomes a very powerful tool to even detect compounds from very
complicated systems.
Summarized, when using a suited separation technique combined with a
specific ionization source and a high resolution mass analyzer, mass spectrometry
provides accurate molecular mass data which allows the determination of
elemental composition and chemical structure of molecules.
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