Patent ID: 7998750

Claim:
A system for selecting at least one m/z peak of a soft ionisation mass spectrum of a partially degraded sample polypeptide for fragmentation, comprising: (a) a memory for storing machine instructions for analysing using an artificial intelligence technique the m/z peaks of an at least two candidate m/z peak sets to select at least one m/z peak for fragmentation, said at least two candidate m/z peak sets determined from said soft ionisation mass spectrum of said partially degraded sample polypeptide, said soft ionisation mass spectrum comprising a set of m/z peaks of ion species obtained from said partially degraded sample polypeptide, each m/z peak in each candidate m/z peak set differing from its at least one neighbour by the mass of an amino acid, and a putative amino acid sequence being determined from each candidate m/z peak set, each amino acid sequence being that of the amino acids which correspond to the mass differences between each m/z peak and its at least one neighbour; and (b) a processor for analysing using the fuzzy logic principles said m/z peaks of said at least two candidate m/z peak sets, to select at least one m/z peak for fragmentation.