Semi-supervised machine learning for automated species identification by collagen peptide mass fingerprinting.

Journal: BMC bioinformatics
Published Date:

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Biomolecular methods for species identification are increasingly being utilised in the study of changing environments, both at the microscopic and macroscopic levels. High-throughput peptide mass fingerprinting has been largely applied to bacterial identification, but increasingly used to identify archaeological and palaeontological skeletal material to yield information on past environments and human-animal interaction. However, as applications move away from predominantly domesticate and the more abundant wild fauna to a much wider range of less common taxa that do not yet have genetically-derived sequence information, robust methods of species identification and biomarker selection need to be determined.

Authors

  • Muxin Gu
    Michael Smith Building, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, The University of Manchester, Manchester, M13 9PT, UK.
  • Michael Buckley
    Manchester Institute of Biotechnology, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of Manchester, 131 Princess Street, Manchester, M1 7DN, UK. m.buckley@manchester.ac.uk.