SPECLUST: a web tool for clustering of mass spectra

Summary: SPECLUST is a web tool for hierarchical clustering of peptide mass spectra obtained from protease-digested proteins. Mass spectra are clustered according to the peptide masses they contain, such that mass spectra containing similar masses are clustered together. Hierarchical clustering of mass spectra with SPECLUST can in particular be useful for MS-screening of large proteomic data sets derived from 2D-gels. SPECLUST can also be used to identify masses shared by mass spectra. Masses present in the majority of the mass spectra in a data set are likely to be contaminants. With SPECLUST, MS/MS can be focused on non-contaminant shared masses in a cluster, facilitating investigations of protein isoforms. Within a cluster, shared and unique masses represent peptides from regions that are similar and different, respectively, between protein isoforms. Taken together, SPECLUST is a versatile tool for analysis of mass spectrometry data. Availability: SPECLUST is freely available at http://bioinfo.thep.lu.se/speclust.html. Contact: [email protected]