Periodic patterns in distributions of peptide masses.

We are investigating the distribution of the number of peptides for given masses, and especially the observation that peptide density reaches a local maximum approximately every 14Da. This wave pattern exists across species (e.g. human or yeast) and enzyme digestion techniques. To analyze this phenomenon we have developed a mathematical method for computing the mass distributions of peptides, and we present both theoretical and empirical evidence that this 14-Da periodicity does not arise from species selection of peptides but from the number- theoretic properties of the masses of amino acid residues. We also describe other, more subtle periodic patterns in the distribution of peptide masses. We also show that these periodic patterns are robust under a variety of conditions, including the addition of amino acid modifications and selection of mass accuracy scale. The method used here is also applicable to any family of sequential molecules, such as linear hydrocarbons, RNA, single- and double-stranded DNA.