Introduction

A chemical isotope labeling or isotope coded derivatization (ICD) metabolomics platform uses a chemical derivatization method to introduce a mass tag to all of the metabolites having a common functional group (e.g., amine), followed by LC-MS analysis of the labeled metabolites. To apply this platform to metabolomics studies involving quantitative analysis of different groups of samples, automated data processing is required. Herein, we report a data processing method based on the use of a mass spectral feature unique to the chemical labeling approach, i.e., any differential-isotope-labeled metabolites are detected as peak pairs with a fixed mass difference in a mass spectrum. A software tool, IsoMS, has been developed to process the raw data generated from one or multiple LC-MS runs by peak picking, peak pairing, peak-pair filtering, and peak-pair intensity ratio calculation. The same peak pairs detected from multiple samples are then aligned to produce a CSV file that contains the metabolite information and peak ratios relative to a control (e.g., a pooled sample). This file can be readily exported for further data and statistical analysis, which is illustrated in an example of comparing the metabolomes of human urine samples collected before and after drinking coffee. To demonstrate that this method is reliable for data processing, five (13)C2-/(12)C2-dansyl labeled metabolite standards were analyzed by LC-MS. IsoMS was able to detect these metabolites correctly. In addition, in the analysis of a (13)C2-/(12)C2-dansyl labeled human urine, IsoMS detected 2044 peak pairs, and manual inspection of these peak pairs found 90 false peak pairs, representing a false positive rate of 4.4%. IsoMS for Windows running R is freely available for noncommercial use from www.mycompoundid.org/IsoMS.

Publications

  1. IsoMS: automated processing of LC-MS data generated by a chemical isotope labeling metabolomics platform.
    Cite this
    Zhou R, Tseng CL, Huan T, Li L, 2014-05-01 - Analytical chemistry

Credits

  1. Ruokun Zhou
    Developer

    Department of Chemistry, University of Alberta, Canada

  2. Chiao-Li Tseng
    Developer

  3. Tao Huan
    Developer

  4. Liang Li
    Investigator

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Summary
AccessionBT000565
Tool TypeApplication
Category
PlatformsWindows
TechnologiesR
User InterfaceTerminal Command Line
Download Count0
Submitted ByLiang Li