'Signature sets', minimal fragment sets for identifying protein disulfide structures with cyanylation-based mass mapping methodology

Our cyanylation (CN)-based methodology for determining disulfide structure of cystinyl proteins overcomes the limitations of conventional proteolytic methods. However, the CN-based method has the potential drawback that occasionally some CN-induced cleavage fragments may not be detected. We show that CN-based methods can overcome the failure to detect fragments by demonstrating the existence of small 'signature sets' of fragments. The link between signature sets and the robustness of CN-based methodology is validated by two case studies.