Abstract

We report the first large-scale gel-free proteomic analysis of the soluble subproteome of the emerging pathogen Ochrobactrum anthropi. Utilizing our robust offline multidimensional protein identification protocol, a total of 57 280 peptides were initially identified utilizing automated MS/MS analysis software. We describe our investigation of the heuristic protein validation tool PROVALT and demonstrate its ability to increase the speed and accuracy of the curation process of large-scale proteomic datasets. PROVALT reduced our peptide list to 8517 identified peptides and further manual curation of these peptides led to a final list of 984 uniquely identified peptides that resulted in the positive identification of 249 proteins. These identified proteins were functionally classified and physiochemically characterized. A variety of typical "housekeeping" functions identified within the proteome included nucleic acid, amino and fatty acid anabolism and catabolism, glycolysis, TCA cycle, and pyruvate and selenoamino acid metabolism. In addition, a number of potential virulence factors of relevance to both plant and human disease were identified.