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Alexandre Masselot

Publications and source records attributed to Alexandre Masselot.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

Exploring glycopeptide-resistance in Staphylococcus aureus: a combined proteomics and transcriptomics approach for the identification of resistance-related markers.

BACKGROUND: To unravel molecular targets involved in glycopeptide resistance, three isogenic strains of Staphylococcus aureus with different susceptibility levels to vancomycin or teicoplanin were subjected to whole-genome microarray-based transcription and quantitative proteomic profiling. Quantitative proteomics performed on membrane extracts showed exquisite inter-experimental reproducibility permitting the identification and relative quantification of >30% of the predicted S. aureus proteome. RESULTS: In the absence of antibiotic selection pressure, comparison of stable resistant and susceptible strains revealed 94 differentially expressed genes and 178 proteins. As expected, only partial correlation was obtained between transcriptomic and proteomic results during stationary-phase. Application of massively parallel methods identified one third of the complete proteome, a majority of which was only predicted based on genome sequencing, but never identified to date. Several over-expressed genes represent previously reported targets, while series of genes and proteins possibly involved in the glycopeptide resistance mechanism were discovered here, including regulators, global regulator attenuator, hyper-mutability factor or hypothetical proteins. Gene expression of these markers was confirmed in a collection of genetically unrelated strains showing altered susceptibility to glycopeptides. CONCLUSION: Our proteome and transcriptome analyses have been performed during stationary-phase of growth on isogenic strains showing susceptibility or intermediate level of resistance against glycopeptides. Altered susceptibility had emerged spontaneously after infection with a sensitive parental strain, thus not selected in vitro. This combined analysis allows the identification of hundreds of proteins considered, so far as hypothetical protein. In addition, this study provides not only a global picture of transcription and expression adaptations during a complex antibiotic resistance mechanism but also unravels potential drug targets or markers that are constitutively expressed by resistant strains regardless of their genetic background, amenable to be used as diagnostic targets.

Anti-Bacterial Agents↗

InSilicoSpectro: an open-source proteomics library.

We present a new proteomics open-source project, InSilicoSpectro, aimed at implementing recurrent computations that are necessary for proteomics data analysis. Illustrative examples are mass list file format conversions, protein sequence digestion, theoretical peptide and fragment mass computations, graphical display, matching with experimental data, isoelectric point estimation, and peptide retention time prediction. The project library is written in Perl, a widely used scripting language in bioinformatics, and it offers a unique framework of integrated objects to implement complex proteomics data analyses. For instance, only a few lines of code are required to digest a protein with fixed and variable modifications, label peptides with 18O, compute the fragmentation spectra and display their match with experimental spectra. We believe that InSilicoSpectro will be of great help to bioinformaticians, without detailed knowledge of proteomics specifics, and to mass spectrometrists with computer programming interest as well.

Amino Acid Sequence↗

High-performance peptide identification by tandem mass spectrometry allows reliable automatic data processing in proteomics.

In a previous paper we introduced a novel model-based approach (OLAV) to the problem of identifying peptides via tandem mass spectrometry, for which early implementations showed promising performance. We recently further improved this performance to a remarkable level (1-2% false positive rate at 95% true positive rate) and characterized key properties of OLAV like robustness and training set size. We present these results in a synthetic and coherent way along with detailed performance comparisons, a new scoring component making use of peptide amino acidic composition, and new developments like automatic parameter learning. Finally, we discuss the impact of OLAV on the automation of proteomics projects.

Algorithms↗

In vitro and in silico processes to identify differentially expressed proteins.

We present an integrated proteomics platform designed for performing differential analyses. Since reproducible results are essential for comparative studies, we explain how we improved reproducibility at every step of our laboratory processes, e.g. by taking advantage of the powerful laboratory information management system we developed. The differential capacity of our platform is validated by detecting known markers in a real sample and by a spiking experiment. We introduce an innovative two-dimensional (2-D) plot for displaying identification results combined with chromatographic data. This 2-D plot is very convenient for detecting differential proteins. We also adapt standard multivariate statistical techniques to show that peptide identification scores can be used for reliable and sensitive differential studies. The interest of the protein separation approach we generally apply is justified by numerous statistics, complemented by a comparison with a simple shotgun analysis performed on a small volume sample. By introducing an automatic integration step after mass spectrometry data identification, we are able to search numerous databases systematically, including the human genome and expressed sequence tags. Finally, we explain how rigorous data processing can be combined with the work of human experts to set high quality standards, and hence obtain reliable (false positive < 0.35%) and nonredundant protein identifications.

Body Fluids↗

OLAV: towards high-throughput tandem mass spectrometry data identification.

Mass spectrometry combined with database searching has become the preferred method for identifying proteins in proteomics projects. Proteins are digested by one or several enzymes to obtain peptides, which are analyzed by mass spectrometry. We introduce a new family of scoring schemes, named OLAV, aimed at identifying peptides in a database from their tandem mass spectra. OLAV scoring schemes are based on signal detection theory, and exploit mass spectrometry information more extensively than previously existing schemes. We also introduce a new concept of structural matching that uses pattern detection methods to better separate true from false positives. We show the superiority of OLAV scoring schemes compared to MASCOT, a widely used identification program. We believe that this work introduces a new way of designing scoring schemes that are especially adapted to high-throughput projects such as GeneProt large-scale human plasma project, where it is impractical to check all identifications manually.

Bayes Theorem↗

Improved peptide charge state assignment.

We present a new approach capable of assigning charge states to peptides based on both their intact mass spectrum and their fragmentation mass spectrum. More specifically, our approach aims at fully exploiting available information to improve correct charge assignment rate. This is achieved by using information provided by the fragmentation spectrum extensively. For low-resolution spectra, charge assignment based on fragmentation mass spectrum is better than charge assignment based on intact peptide signal only. We introduce two methods that allow to integrate information contributing to successful peptide charge state assignment. We demonstrate the performance of our algorithms on large ion trap data sets. The application of these algorithms to large-scale proteomics projects can save significant computation time and have a positive impact on identification false positive rates.

Algorithms↗

OLAV-PMF: a novel scoring scheme for high-throughput peptide mass fingerprinting.

We propose a new type of probabilistic scoring scheme framework for protein identification from peptide masses. We first introduce the framework itself and explain its requirements. In a second part, we describe a particular implementation and test it on a data set of more than 8000 MALDI-TOF spectra with known contents. Doing so, we also compare its performance to two widely used scoring schemes, thereby demonstrating the potential of the proposed approach.

Algorithms↗