Inferring Peptide from Full Spectrum solved by 811

July 25, 2012, midnight by Sonya Alexandrova

Topics: Computational Mass Spectrometry

Ions Galore

In “Inferring Protein from Spectrum”, we inferred a protein string from a list of b-ions. In practice, biologists have no way of distinguishing between b-ions and y-ions in the simplified spectrum of a peptide. However, we will often possess a pair of masses in the spectrum corresponding to a single cut. The two corresponding ions complement each other: for example, mass("PR") + mass("TEIN") = mass("PRTEIN"). As a result, we can easily infer the mass of a b-ion from its complementary y-ion and vice versa, as long as we already know the parent mass, i.e., the mass of the entire peptide.

The theoretical simplified spectrum for a protein $P$ of length $n$ is constructed as follows: form all possible cuts, then compute the mass of the b-ion and the y-ion at each cut. Duplicate masses are allowed. You might guess how we could modify “Inferring Protein from Spectrum” to infer a peptide from its theoretical simplified spectrum; here we consider a slightly modified form of this problem in which we attempt to identify the interior region of a peptide given only b-ions and y-ions that are cut within this region. As a result, we will have constant masses at the beginning and end of the peptide that will be present in the mass of every b-ion and y-ion, respectively.

Problem

Say that we have a string $s$ containing $t$ as an internal substring, so that there exist nonempty substrings $s_1$ and $s_2$ of $s$ such that $s$ can be written as $s_1 t s_2$. A t-prefix contains all of $s_1$ and none of $s_2$; likewise, a t-suffix contains all of $s_2$ and none of $s_1$.

Given: A list $L$ containing $2n + 3$ positive real numbers ($n \leq 100$). The first number in $L$ is the parent mass of a peptide $P$, and all other numbers represent the masses of some b-ions and y-ions of $P$ (in no particular order). You may assume that if the mass of a b-ion is present, then so is that of its complementary y-ion, and vice-versa.

Return: A protein string $t$ of length $n$ for which there exist two positive real numbers $w_1$ and $w_2$ such that for every prefix $p$ and suffix $s$ of $t$, each of $w(p) + w_1$ and $w(s) + w_2$ is equal to an element of $L$. (In other words, there exists a protein string whose $t$-prefix and $t$-suffix weights correspond to the non-parent mass values of $L$.) If multiple solutions exist, you may output any one.

Sample Dataset

1988.21104821
610.391039105
738.485999105
766.492149105
863.544909105
867.528589105
992.587499105
995.623549105
1120.6824591
1124.6661391
1221.7188991
1249.7250491
1377.8200091

Sample Output

KEKEP

Please login to solve this problem.