A low cost reactor for high-throughput activity screening of heterogeneous catalysts by mass spectrometry

Recently, mass spectrometry (MS) has emerged as an important tool for high-throughput screening (HTS) providing a direct and label-free detection method, complementing traditional fluorescent and colorimetric methodologies. Among the various MS techniques used for HTS, matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry (MALDI-MS) provides many of the characteristics required for high-throughput analyses, such as low cost, speed, and automation. However, visualization and analysis of the large datasets generated by HTS MALDI-MS can pose significant challenges, especially for multiparametric experiments. The datasets can be generated fast, and the complexity of the experimental data (e.g., screening many different sorbent phases, the sorbent mass, and the load, wash, and elution conditions) makes manual data analysis difficult. To address these challenges, a comprehensive informatics tool called MALDIViz was developed. This tool is an R-Shiny-based web application, accessible independently of the operating system and without the need to install any program locally. It has been designed to facilitate easy analysis and visualization of MALDI-MS datasets, comparison of multiplex experiments, and export of the analysis results to high-quality images.

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A High-Throughput, Low-Cost Method for Analysis of Carbonate Samples for 14C

Radiocarbon ◽

10.1017/s0033822200057726 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 55 (2) ◽

pp. 585-592 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Mark L Roberts ◽

Steven R Beaupré ◽

Joshua R Burton

Keyword(s):

Mass Spectrometry ◽

Cost Analysis ◽

High Throughput ◽

Accelerator Mass Spectrometry ◽

Organic Material ◽

Low Cost ◽

Automated System ◽

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution ◽

Ocean Sciences ◽

Better Than

The National Ocean Sciences Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (NOSAMS) facility at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has developed an automated system for high-throughput, low-cost analysis of radiocarbon in carbonate samples (e.g. corals, carbonaceous sediments, speleothems, etc.). The method bypasses graphitization and pretreatment, and reduces costs to about 1/5th the price of a graphite-based 14C carbonate analysis, with a throughput of 60 unknowns per day and an analytical precision of better than 2%. Additionally, a simple mixing experiment indicated that extensive cleaning of carbonate samples to remove organic material is not necessary.

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Introducing SPeDE: High-Throughput Dereplication and Accurate Determination of Microbial Diversity from Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption–Ionization Time of Flight Mass Spectrometry Data

mSystems ◽

10.1128/msystems.00437-19 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 4 (5) ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Charles Dumolin ◽

Maarten Aerts ◽

Bart Verheyde ◽

Simon Schellaert ◽

Tim Vandamme ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Mass Spectrometry ◽

High Throughput ◽

Low Cost ◽

Laser Desorption ◽

Taxonomic Resolution ◽

Laser Desorption Ionization ◽

Data Set ◽

Ionization Time ◽

Maldi Tof ◽

Global Similarity

ABSTRACT The isolation of microorganisms from microbial community samples often yields a large number of conspecific isolates. Increasing the diversity covered by an isolate collection entails the implementation of methods and protocols to minimize the number of redundant isolates. Matrix-assisted laser desorption–ionization time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF) mass spectrometry methods are ideally suited to this dereplication problem because of their low cost and high throughput. However, the available software tools are cumbersome and rely either on the prior development of reference databases or on global similarity analyses, which are inconvenient and offer low taxonomic resolution. We introduce SPeDE, a user-friendly spectral data analysis tool for the dereplication of MALDI-TOF mass spectra. Rather than relying on global similarity approaches to classify spectra, SPeDE determines the number of unique spectral features by a mix of global and local peak comparisons. This approach allows the identification of a set of nonredundant spectra linked to operational isolation units. We evaluated SPeDE on a data set of 5,228 spectra representing 167 bacterial strains belonging to 132 genera across six phyla and on a data set of 312 spectra of 78 strains measured before and after lyophilization and subculturing. SPeDE was able to dereplicate with high efficiency by identifying redundant spectra while retrieving reference spectra for all strains in a sample. SPeDE can identify distinguishing features between spectra, and its performance exceeds that of established methods in speed and precision. SPeDE is open source under the MIT license and is available from https://github.com/LM-UGent/SPeDE. IMPORTANCE Estimation of the operational isolation units present in a MALDI-TOF mass spectral data set involves an essential dereplication step to identify redundant spectra in a rapid manner and without sacrificing biological resolution. We describe SPeDE, a new algorithm which facilitates culture-dependent clinical or environmental studies. SPeDE enables the rapid analysis and dereplication of isolates, a critical feature when long-term storage of cultures is limited or not feasible. We show that SPeDE can efficiently identify sets of similar spectra at the level of the species or strain, exceeding the taxonomic resolution of other methods. The high-throughput capacity, speed, and low cost of MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry and SPeDE dereplication over traditional gene marker-based sequencing approaches should facilitate adoption of the culturomics approach to bacterial isolation campaigns.

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