Peptidomic Pattern Analysis and Taxonomy of Amphibian Species

In taxonomy, frog is a member of the Anura order under the class of Amphibia with many species. Some species of frog share a common biological function with other species, some have unique biological activities. Peptides contained in the frog species play an important role in these biological functions. In this paper, we investigate the degree of similarity of skin secretion peptide profiles between species. After the ESI-MS spectra from a sample of amphibian skin secretions are interpreted and deconvoluted by a heuristic deconvolution algorithm [1], a mass spectral profile is established. An overlap comparison algorithm is proposed and applied for the comparison of the peptide profiles between species. Results from the interspecies comparison and intraspecies comparison show that the peptide profiles of frog skin secretion can reflect their taxonomy classification.