Optimization and Modeling of Quadrupole Orbitrap Parameters for Sensitive Analysis toward Single-Cell Proteomics
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Single-cell proteomics represents a field of extremely sensitive proteomic analysis, owing to the minute amount of yet complex proteins in a single cell. Without amplification potential as of nucleic acids, single-cell mass spectrometry (MS) analysis demands special instrumentation running with optimized parameters to maximize the sensitivity and throughput for comprehensive proteomic discovery. To facilitate such analysis, we here investigated two factors critical to peptide sequencing and protein detection in shotgun proteomics, i.e. precursor ion isolation window (IW) and maximum precursor ion injection time (ITmax), on an ultrahigh-field quadrupole Orbitrap (Q-Exactive HF). Counterintuitive to the frequently used proteomic parameters for bulk samples (>100 ng), our experimental data and subsequent modeling suggested a universally optimal IW of 4.0 Th for sample quantity ranging from 100 ng to 1 ng, and a sample-quantity dependent ITmax of more than 250 ms for 1-ng samples. Compared with the benchmark condition of IW = 2.0 Th and ITmax = 50 ms, our optimization generated up to 300% increase to the detected protein groups for 1-ng samples. The additionally identified proteins allowed deeper penetration of proteome for better revealing crucial cellular functions such as signaling and cell adhesion. We hope this effort can prompt single-cell and trace proteomic analysis and enable a rational selection of MS parameters.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".