Motivation: Liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC/MS) is a key technique in metabolomics. Since the efficient assignment of MS signals to true biological metabolites becomes feasible in combination with in vivo stable isotopic labelling, our aim was to provide a new software tool for this purpose.#R##N##R##N#Results: An algorithm and a program (MetExtract) have been developed to search for metabolites in in vivo labelled biological samples. The algorithm makes use of the chromatographic characteristics of the LC/MS data and detects MS peaks fulfilling the criteria of stable isotopic labelling. As a result of all calculations, the algorithm specifies a list of m/z values, the corresponding number of atoms of the labelling element (e.g. carbon) together with retention time and extracted adduct-, fragment- and polymer ions. Its function was evaluated using native 12C- and uniformly 13C-labelled standard substances.#R##N##R##N#Availability: MetExtract is available free of charge and warranty at http://code.google.com/p/metextract/. Precompiled executables are available for Windows operating systems.#R##N##R##N#Contact: ta.ca.ukob@rehcamhuhcs.reniar#R##N##R##N#Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
['Christoph Bueschl', 'Bernhard Kluger', 'Franz Berthiller', 'Gerald Lirk', 'Stephan Winkler', 'Rudolf Krska', 'Rainer Schuhmacher']
MetExtract: a new software tool for the automated comprehensive extraction of metabolite-derived LC/MS signals in metabolomics research