Cited by 860Metabolomics and Mass Spectrometry StudiesMass Spectrometry Techniques and ApplicationsComputational Drug Discovery Methods

Systematic classification of unknown metabolites using high-resolution fragmentation mass spectra

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Dührkop, Kai, Nothias, Louis-Félix, Fleischauer, Markus, Reher, Raphael, Ludwig, Marcus, Hoffmann, Martin A., Petras, Daniel, Gerwick, William H. +3 more·2021·Nature Biotechnology

Published version of a preprint

Abstract

Metabolomics using nontargeted tandem mass spectrometry can detect thousands of molecules in a biological sample. However, structural molecule annotation is limited to structures present in libraries or databases, restricting analysis and interpretation of experimental data. Here we describe CANOPUS (class assignment and ontology prediction using mass spectrometry), a computational tool for systematic compound class annotation. CANOPUS uses a deep neural network to predict 2,497 compound classes from fragmentation spectra, including all biologically relevant classes. CANOPUS explicitly targets compounds for which neither spectral nor structural reference data are available and predicts classes lacking tandem mass spectrometry training data. In evaluation using reference data, CANOPUS reached very high prediction performance (average accuracy of 99.7% in cross-validation) and outperformed four baseline methods. We demonstrate the broad utility of CANOPUS by investigating the effect of microbial colonization in the mouse digestive system, through analysis of the chemodiversity of different Euphorbia plants and regarding the discovery of a marine natural product, revealing biological insights at the compound class level.

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  1. Shinbo, Y. et al. in Plant Metabolomics, Vol. 57. (eds. K. Saito, R.A. Dixon & L. Willmitzer) 165-181 (#SV#, 2006).
  2. Abadi, M.n. et al. in 12th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI 16) 265-283 (2016).
  3. Platt, J.C. in Advances in large margin classifiers (MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts; 2000).

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Authors
Dührkop, K., Nothias, L.-F., Fleischauer, M., Reher, R., Ludwig, M., Hoffmann, M. A., Petras, D., Gerwick, W. H., Rousu, J., Dorrestein, P. C., & Böcker, S.
Affiliations
  • Friedrich Schiller University Jena (DE)
  • Scripps Institution of Oceanography (US)
  • Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology (DE)
  • Helsinki Institute for Information Technology (FI)
  • University of California San Diego (US)
Corresponding author
Böcker, Sebastian
Venue
Nature Biotechnology
Published
2020-11-23
Volume
39
Issue
4
Pages
462-471
ISSN
  • 0733-222X (ISSN-L)
  • 1087-0156
  • 1546-1696
OpenAlex
W3108604517
Cited by
860
References
82
Citations by year
2026: 167 · 2025: 204 · 2024: 185 · 2023: 134 · 2022: 90 · 2021: 76 · 2020: 4
FWCI
24.66
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Nature Biotechnology (publishedVersion)
  • bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (acceptedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion)
Funders
  • Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (BO 1910/20, PE 2600/1)
  • U.S. Department of Health & Human Services | National Institutes of Health (R01 GM107550, R01GN107550, R01GM107550)
  • EC | Horizon 2020 Framework Programme (MSCA-GF, 704786)
  • Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (GBMF7622)
  • Academy of Finland (310107/MACOME)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Metabolomics and Mass Spectrometry Studies
  • Physical Sciences › Chemistry › Spectroscopy › Mass Spectrometry Techniques and Applications
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computational Theory and Mathematics › Computational Drug Discovery Methods
Keywords
Canopus, unknown metabolites, deep neural network, untargeted metabolomics, tandem mass spectrometry, chemical ontology, microbial colonization, mouse gut microbiome, marine natural products, metabolite classification
MeSH terms
Gastrointestinal Microbiome, Animals, Biological Products, Chromatography, Liquid, Neural Networks, Computer, Computational Biology, Euphorbia, Mice, Tandem Mass Spectrometry, Metabolomics, Aquatic Organisms

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