Alternative LC-MS/MS Platforms and Data Acquisition Strategies for Proteomic Genotyping of Human Hair Shafts

Protein is a major component of all biological evidence. Proteomic genotyping is the use of genetically variant peptides that contain single amino acid polymorphisms to infer the genotype of matching non-synonymous single nucleotide polymorphisms for the individual who originated the protein sample. This can be used to statistically associate an individual to evidence found at a crime scene. The utility of the inferred genotype increases as the detection of genetically variant peptides increases, which is the direct result of technology transfer to mass spectrometry platforms typically available. Digests of single (2 cm) human hair shafts from three European and two African subjects were analyzed using data dependent acquisition on a Q-Exactive Plus Hybrid Quadrupole-Orbitrap system, data independent acquisition and a variant of parallel reaction monitoring on a Orbitrap Fusion Lumos Tribrid system, and multiple reaction monitoring on an Agilent 6495 triple quadrupole system. In our hands, average genetically variant peptide detection from a selected 24 genetically variant peptide panel increased from 6.5 {+/-} 1.1 and 3.1 {+/-} 0.8 using data dependent and independent acquisition to 9.5 {+/-} 0.7 and 11.7 {+/-} 1.7 using parallel reaction monitoring and multiple reaction monitoring (p View larger version (30K): org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@1001cfaorg.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@6e8aa1org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@14f8076org.highwire.dtl.DTLVardef@7ad930_HPS_FORMAT_FIGEXP M_FIG C_FIG