Consolidating metabolite identifiers to enable contextual and multi-platform metabolomics data analysis

Background: Analysis of data from high-throughput experiments depends on the availability of well-structured data that describe the assayed biomolecules. Procedures for obtaining and organizing such meta-data on genes, transcripts and proteins have been streamlined in many data analysis packages, but are still lacking for metabolites. Chemical identifiers are notoriously incoherent, encompassing a wide range of different referencing schemes with varying scope and coverage. Online chemical databases use multiple types of identifiers in parallel but lack a common primary key for reliable database consolidation. Connecting identifiers of analytes found in experimental data with the identifiers of their parent metabolites in public databases can therefore be very laborious. Results: Here we present a strategy and a software tool for integrating metabolite identifiers from local reference libraries and public databases that do not depend on a single common primary identifier. The program c...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: BMCBI
• Authors: Henning Redestig, Miyako Kusano, Atsushi Fukushima, Fumio Matsuda, Kazuki Saito, Masanori Arita
• Keywords: BMCBI 2010, Database, Identifiers, Metabolite