PACOM: A Versatile Tool for Integrating, Filtering, Visualizing, and Comparing Multiple Large Mass Spectrometry Proteomics Data Sets.

Mass-spectrometry-based proteomics has evolved into a high-throughput technology in which numerous large-scale data sets are generated from diverse analytical platforms. Furthermore, several scientific journals and funding agencies have emphasized the storage of proteomics data in public repositories to facilitate its evaluation, inspection, and reanalysis. (1) As a consequence, public proteomics data repositories are growing rapidly. However, tools are needed to integrate multiple proteomics data sets to compare different experimental features or to perform quality control analysis. Here, we present a new Java stand-alone tool, Proteomics Assay COMparator (PACOM), that is able to import, combine, and simultaneously compare numerous proteomics experiments to check the integrity of the proteomic data as well as verify data quality. With PACOM, the user can detect source of errors that may have been introduced in any step of a proteomics workflow and that influence the final results. Data sets can be easily compared and integrated, and data quality and reproducibility can be visually assessed through a rich set of graphical representations of proteomics data features as well as a wide variety of data filters. Its flexibility and easy-to-use interface make PACOM a unique tool for daily use in a proteomics laboratory. PACOM is available at https://github.com/smdb21/pacom .