PEAKS is a popular tandem
mass spectrometry software designed for
peptide sequencing and
protein identification. Other than being used for
search engine protein identification (Protein ID), it is one of the earliest adaptors for de novo sequencing (both automated and manual) and
peptide sequence tag based searching. (SPIDER).In short, de novo sequencing is peptide sequencing performed without prior knowledge of the
amino acid sequence.
[1] The PEAKS website describes this as "the ability to provide the sequence of a peptide without the aid of a protein sequence database..."
[2].
See more at Wikipedia.org...