Figure 2.
Graphical depiction of USI application ecosystem. Members of the community can uniquely identify spectra from journal articles and other sources using USIs. A USI can be resolved potentially at any of several different repositories that store datasets, or spectra can be obtained and viewed using independent applications, such as at ProteomeCentral, which store no spectra themselves, but can fetch spectral data from repositories using USIs. Hundreds of millions of peptide-spectrum matches (PSMs) and spectra without matches are accessible via USIs at the various repositories. PSMs or spectra can even be uniquely identified with QR (Quick Response) codes.