In the eye of the beholder: does the master see the SameSpots as the novice?

Historically, the use of two-dimensional electrophoresis (2-DE) in quantitative proteomics has been hampered by significant technical variance. Over the past decade, a range of technological leaps have reduced the overall variance of 2-DE, thus turning the technology into a robust platform for quantitative intact proteomics. However, as the confounding gel-to-gel variation improves, the variance arising from the subsequent image analysis becomes more prominent. Limitations in image alignment and spot detection of previous generations of 2-DE analysis software have demanded considerable user-intervention and manual editing, resulting in introduction of a large degree of subjectivity and software-induced variance. We evaluated the performance of SameSpots, representing a new generation of 2-DE image analysis software, using both DIGE and traditional single-stain 2-DE approaches. Evaluations of the software-induced variance in relation to other sources of variance, as well as the subjectivity through compari...