Standardised metabolite annotation workflows for enhancing biological interpretation in metabolomic data repositories

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Impact Summary - Standardised metabolite annotation workflows for enhanced biological interpretation in metabolomic data repositories

There will be a number of direct or indirect benefits observed by academic and industrial research groups, commercial industrial companies, and the research staff employed for the proposed research. Many national and international academic groups and businesses will benefit from the publicly accessible datasets with significantly increased numbers of metabolites which are identified. These include:

1. Academic researchers performing non-targeted metabolomics using LC-MS and NMR. The resource developed will benefit
research in to microbes, plants and animals in areas including synthetic biology, crop production and human ageing in two different ways (i) an open access computational resource which will be available to all researchers globally to apply in their research and (ii) access to approximately 2000 currently deposited metabolomic datasetswith enriched numbers of identified metabolites and therefore containing higher levels of metabolic and biological information.

2. Industry scientists performing metabolism research who can benefit in the same ways as for academic researchers. The computational workflow developed can be applied by these researchers and the biologically enriched datasets can be investigated to support greater understanding of the metabolism underlying the production of pharmaceuticals and chemicals and in improved crop production, as examples.

3. Government agencies in the UK performing metabolism research who can benefit in the same ways as for academic researchers. The computational workflow developed can be applied by these researchers and the biologically enriched datasets can be investigated to support their research. For example, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the UK who through the FERA facility apply non-targeted metabolomics for food safety and food authenticity testing and crop protection.

4. Commercial instrument suppliers, specifically those supplying mass spectrometers and nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometers as the resource will be applicable to a range of different analytical platforms from different commercial instrument suppliers.

5. Post-doctoral research associates employed during the research through training in different scientific disciplines and through personal and organisational development.