Development of an MS Workflow Based on Combining Database Search Engines for Accurate Protein Identification and Its Validation to Identify the Serum Proteomic Profile in Female Stress Urinary Incontinence

Figure 4

Comparison of the combined method with every single engine. FDR vs. accepted proteins by the combined approach and by each search engine. Within the usable range of FDR values (<0.05), our method shows an accurate selectivity comparing to single-engine results. Passing the usable range of FDR (higher FDR values), for each single engine, almost all the hits are already accepted which explains the slow increase. While the combined approach will continue increasing for the simple fact of summing the reported hits from all engines, the number of accepted proteins for the combined approach is found highly correlated to the FDR.