Precise protein quantification based on peptide quantification using iTRAQ™

The software Quant demonstrates improvements in protein quantification using iTRAQ. Precise quantification data can be obtained at the protein level when using error propagation and adequate visualization. Quant integrates both and additionally provides the possibility to obtain more reliable results by calculation of wise quality measures. Peak area integration has been replaced by sum of intensities, yielding more reliable quantification results. Additionally, Quant allows the combination of quantitative information obtained by iTRAQ with peptide and protein identifications from popular tandem MS identification tools. Hence Quant is a useful tool for the proteomics community and may help improving analysis of proteomic experimental data. In addition, we have shown that a lognormal distribution fits the data of mass spectrometry based relative peptide quantification.