VisioProt-MS plots the masses of eluting proteins as a function of their retention time to allow inspection and analysis of runs from liquid chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (LC-MS). It is also possible to overlay MS/MS results from top-down analysis. The Shiny-based web application VisioProt-MS is suitable for non-R users. It can be found on our team's webpage and the corresponding scripts are accessible here. It is governed by the CeCILL license.

If you use VisioProt-MS for your research please cite: Marie Locard-Paulet, Julien Parra, Renaud Albigot, Emmanuelle Mouton-Barbosa, Laurent Bardi, Odile Burlet-Schiltz, Julien Marcoux; VisioProt-MS: interactive 2D maps from intact protein mass spectrometry, Bioinformatics, , bty680, https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/bty680

Step-by-step description of the options:

MS mode:

The first check box allows to choose between “MS” and “MS/MS” for plotting deconvoluted LC-MS data or results of a top-down analysis.

MS

Upload of the deconvoluted MS file. The user can select one or many files to plot. In that case, they have to be sure that files are located in the same folder. We advise not to exceed a maximum limit size of 5 MB per file. Uploading larger files will significantly decrease the application speed.

Input files

Here are downloadable examples of the head of supported format files for MS data followed by an example of VisioProt-MS output.

RoWinPro export: (tab-separated csv files)

Download example.


Bruker Data Analysis export: (coma-separated csv files with two rows of comments)

Download example.


Intact Protein Analysis (BioPharma Finder) export: (tab-separated txt files)

The user has to export result tables at the “Component Level only” and to convert the exported .xlsx files in tab-separated text files.

Download example.


TopFD export: (ms1.msalign files)

Download example.


ProMex export: (ms1ft files)

Download example.

Test mode




It is possible to check the box Using test mode to test the app and all of the functionalities without loading any input file.

Upon checking the box, two buttons appear:

  • Single test file uploads a test file in a RoWinPro format.
  • Multiple test files uploads three files from a RoWinPro export. These are plotted together in order to be compared.

MS/MS

Input files






To overlay MS/MS identification results to a given MS trace, the user needs to upload a MS file (same input formats as the ones described above for the MS mode) and the corresponding MS/MS results. These can originate from Proteome Discoverer (Thermo Fisher Scientific), MSPathFinder (Informed Proteomics) or TopPIC (TopPIC Suite).


Here are downloadable examples of the supported format files for MS/MS data:

Proteome Discoverer export:




To plot MS/MS results from Proteome Discoverer, the user needs to upload two .txt files resulting from the same search.


  • The MS/MS file:

Download example.


  • The corresponding PSM file:

Download example.


MSPathFinder export:


To plot MS/MS results from MSPathFinder, the user needs to upload the IcTarget.tsv or IcTda.tsv file and the corresponding .ms1FT file (in “Select MS input file for MS”). Although other MS/MS input can be loaded without any MS data, it is not possible with workflow analysis using Informed-Proteomics solution.


Here is an example of a IcTarget.tsv file:

Download example.


TopPIC export:


To plot MS/MS results from TopPIC, the user needs to upload a ms2.msalign file and the OUTPUT_TABLE file resulting from the same search.


  • The ms2.msalign file:

Download example.


  • The OUTPUT_TABLE file:

Download example.


Select ID to highlight




All identified proteins in the input MS2 file appear in this selection box upon loading. This allows the user to select and pinpoint some proteins of interest. These will then be highlighted in the plot with as many colours as proteins selected. The colour of the proteins depends on the number of selected IDs.

Hiding the MS/MS points that did not lead to protein identification



This check box allows the user to hide the MS/MS spectra that were not matched to a protein identification. This allows to focus on the identified proteins.

Displaying/hiding the MS trace


This check box allows the user to display/hide the MS data to focus on the analysis of the MS/MS data.

General options

All of the following parameters are common to the MS and MS/MS modes.

Show data labels





This check box allows the user to enter in a dynamic mode where labels appear when hovering the mouse on data points. This renders the application significatively slower, so we strongly advise to only use this mode at the end of the plotting optimization (after having defined point size, colour scale, threshold and zooming).

Because the information is displayed in the labels, when this box is checked in the MS2 mode, there is no legend for the protein IDs. Nevertheless, the legend will be present in the exported figure when clicking on one of the Download button (or when unchecking the Show data labels box).

Plot parameters

It is possible to change the specifications of the plot on the fly with the following parameters:

Colours

Two sets of colour schemes are available for plotting single or multiple files:

Colour schemes for single files:

These have been chosen to visualise the signal intensities in a single file.

Spectral:

Red/yellow/blue:

Red/yellow/green:

yellow to red:

Colour schemes for multiple files:

These have been chosen to differenciate the signal from the distinct files.

Paired:

Set1:

Set2:

Set3:

Set4:

Set5:

Point size

This defines the size of the points / thickness of the lines.

Threshold

This defines the percentage of highest intensity features of the MS data to display. It is only applied to MS data, even in MS/MS mode.

Zooming options



Left button unzooms one step back (only once). It reverts back to the previous x- and y-axis limits.

The button “Total unzoom” unzooms to the limits of the LC-MS data uploaded.

Result export




These buttons instantly download an image corresponding to the current VisioProt-MS plot. The user can choose between three file formats. The file will be saved in the Downloads folder of the user, and will be named “VisioProt-MS_” with the name of the input MS file and the date of the day.