Achievement

IGERT trainees Christopher Jacobs and Jonathan Dreyfus published a paper as a result of their 2009-2010 Challenge Project (Targeted analysis of glycomics liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry data. Anal Bioanal Chem, 2010, 399(2), 727-35). Hydrophilic interaction chromatography (HILIC) liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS) is appropriate for native and reductively aminated glycan classes, but widespread use is limited by the high time cost of data analysis. To eliminate this problem, an open source software tool, Manatee, was developed for targeted analysis of HILIC LC/MS glycan datasets. The tool accepts high-resolution LC/MS data using the public mzXML format and can process a large data file in a few minutes on a standard desktop computer. It allows mining of HILIC LC/MS data with an output compatible with multivariate statistical analysis. The Manatee tool will complement more computationally intensive LC/MS processing based on deconvolution and deisotoping techniques.