Novor -- De novo peptide sequencing that's faster than your data acquisition

De novo sequencing has traditionally been a pain in the neck. If you are looking at low resolution MS/MS spectra there are often 10s, maybe 100s of possibilities out there to explain a given fragmentation spectra.  High resolution accurate mass MS/MS spectra with fragments that are often only a few 100 parts per billion off in mass accuracy? That improves things a LOT!  And that's why we're seeing things like de novo and wide mass accuracy windows making a resurgence.

You know what would be useful? A free (for academics...) super fast new de novo algorithm!  And that is what Novor is. Novor makes some intelligent assumptions based on biological data (from spectral libraries) and can take a shortcut or two that other de novo algorithms can't. What you end up with is a crazy amount of sequencing speed without a loss in match certainty since its based on real data.

Novor has already been picked up in the new version of the awesome DeNovoGUI and is about to (or has, I forget...) appear in the super cool PeptideShaker.

If you're an academic you should check this out!  If you aren't, you should check out their legal stuff or contact them to find out how you can use it.

You can read about Novor in this Open Access paper here.

And you can visit the RapidNovor website here.