Rossel, Sven and Martínez Arbizu, Pedro
(2018)
Effects of sample fixation on specimen identification in biodiversity assemblies based on proteomic data (MALDI-TOF).
Frontiers in Marine Science, 5.
p. 149.
ISSN 2296-7745
Abstract
Recently, MALDI-TOFmass spectrometry has been used to reliably identify taxonomically
difficult harpacticoid copepods from sediment samples. In agreement with former
studies, a negative impact of short storage periods was stated. Other studies reported
inferior mass spectra quality from samples fixated in varying ethanol concentrations.
Therefore, sediment samples from a mudflat sampling site in the North Sea were stored
under different temperature conditions to explore possible storage effects. Samples were
fixated with either 70 or 100% ethanol and specimens were measured using MALDI-TOF
mass spectrometry after 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, and 12 weeks. The changes in number of peaks
per species and the ability to identify specimens based on mass spectra were analyzed
quality measurements. We show that storage temperature had a major impact on data
quality, as for some species a loss of up to 50% of mass peaks and an increase of
failed measurements to over 70% was observed. However, the effect of different ethanol
concentrations on data quality was negligible. Concluding from these results, storage of
metazoan samples in general and, particularly, of sediment samples at low temperatures
of around −25◦C is recommended to receive high-quality mass spectra for specimen
identification.
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