New analysis program comprehensively captures small metabolites

May 5, 2015

MS-DIAL for next-generation metabolomics

RIKEN CSRS and University of California at Davis researchers have jointly developed an analysis program for metabolomics that comprehensively detects small biomolecules. This open-source software is dubbed MS-DIAL (Mass Spectrometry Data Independent AnaLysis).

MS-DIAL incorporates an algorithm for deconvoluting overlapped spectra from tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS), and was demonstrated to identify 1,023 lipid compounds from MS/MS spectra of nine algal strains. This technology allows users to extract MS/MS spectra on demand, alleviating repeated measurements of same samples on different conditions. Consequently, MS-DIAL can prevent excessive sample losses.

This achievement provides a fundamental technology in next-generation metabolomics to capture a comprehensive picture of all measurable compounds.

Original article

Nature Methods doi: 10.1038/NMETH.3393

H. Tsugawa, T. Cajka, T. Kind, Y. Ma, B. Higgins, K. Ikeda, M. Kanazawa, J. VanderGheynst, O. Fiehn, M. Arita,

"MS-DIAL: Data Independent MS/MS Deconvolution for Comprehensive Metabolome Analysis".

Contact

Masanori Arita: Team Leader

Hiroshi Tsugawa: Postdoctoral Researcher

Metabolome Informatics Research Team