MALDI-MS data analysis for disease biomarker discovery. New and Emerging Proteomics Techniques

In this chapter, we address the issue of matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spec-trometry (MS) data analysis for disease biomarker discovery. We first give a general framework of MS data analysis, then focus on several key steps. After that, we show some application exam-ples using an ovarian sera cancer dataset. Finally, we discuss the limitations of current approaches and possible future research directions. Key Words: Proteomics; MALDI-MS data analysis; peak detection; peak alignment; feature selection; sample classification