ALGORITHMS FOR AUTOMATIC PROCESSING OF DATA FROM MASS SPECTROMETRIC ANALYSES

Washington University, Saint Louis MO

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Abstract

This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. Primary support for the subproject and the subproject's principal investigator may have been provided by other sources, including other NIH sources. The Total Cost listed for the subproject likely represents the estimated amount of Center infrastructure utilized by the subproject, not direct funding provided by the NCRR grant to the subproject or subproject staff. Recently developed mass spectrometric methods for lipid analyses, especially electrospray ionization (ESI) tandem mass spectrometry, permit identification and measurement of an enormous variety of distinct lipid molecular species from small amounts of biological samples but generate a huge amount of experimental data within a brief interval. Processing such data sets so that comprehensible information is derived from them requires bioinformatics tools, and algorithms developed for proteomics and genomics have provided some strategies that can be directly adapted to lipidomics. The structural diversity and complexity of lipids, however, also requires the development and application of new algorithms and software tools that are specifically directed at processing data from lipid analyses.