Patent ID: 8160819

Claim:
A method for identification of an unknown protein, the method comprising: (i) extracting the unknown protein from a sample; (ii) preparing the unknown protein for laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry; (iii) using the mass spectrometer to ionize and fragment the unknown protein, thereby performing a chemical analysis and obtaining a mass spectrum of the unknown protein; (iv) comparing mass-to-charge (m/z) fragment ion peaks from the mass spectrum of the unknown protein to that of m/z fragment ion peaks from mass spectra of known protein sequences; and (v) matching the m/z fragment ion peaks from the mass spectrum of the unknown protein to the m/z fragment ion peaks from the mass spectra of known protein sequences to provide mass spectrometry peak matches; (vi) scoring the mass spectrometry peak matches using a USDA peak matching algorithm thereby providing a USDA peak matching score; and (vii) ranking the USDA peak matching score from highest to lowest; wherein the highest USDA peak matching score constitutes an identification of the unknown protein.