March 1, 2013 (Vol. 33, No. 5)
URL:
http://bit.ly/X9Kfog
Rating:
Strong Points: Many different functionalities
Weak Points: Limited search feature
Platform:
iPhone
Cost:
Free
Summary:
While the “MS Bioworks” moniker does not provide much insight into the purpose of this app, its other name given in the app description and within the app itself—Proteomics Community Calculator—gives you a better idea of its functionality. Designed primarily for protein chemists, this app provides a tool to view peptide fragments resulting from a variety of digestion conditions as well as a peptide fragmentor that displays ions resulting from a user-specified peptide sequence. The app requires that users search for specific proteins by either human gene symbol or UniProt ID, which is a bit limiting. It would be nice, for example, to be able to search by keyword if one does not have the gene symbol or UniProt ID on hand. (A search for “kinase,” for instance, retrieves no results.) That limitation aside, the app has a number of useful features, such as information about amino acids and some unit conversion calculators.