Project Number: 1907-21000-032-01
Project Type: Nonfunded Cooperative Agreement

Start Date: Aug 01, 2012
End Date: Sep 30, 2013

Objective:
1. To improve software directed at analyzing mass spectrometry profiling of small molecules. 2. To enhance analysis of ARS generated datasets beyond current capacity.

Approach:
Analysis of mass spectrometry datasets is highly challenging and often represents a rate limiting step in metabolomics. Nonlinear Dynamics, a leading software provider for the proteomics community, approached ARS regarding the development of a new product for metabolomics analysis. ARS staff provided pre-publication data to Nonlinear Dynamics, to assist with the development of software and training of customers. Nonlinear Dynamics will assist ARS scientists in the annotation of this dataset, such that the number of identified compounds found in the tomato fruit metabolome will rise. This partnership will greatly enhance ARS efforts to analyze the composition of conventionally improved and transgenic tomato varieties. This donation to ARS of time and expertise by Nonlinear Dynamics is worth thousands of dollars. Additionally, Nonlinear Dynamics and ARS scientists will cooperate to write a technical note describing new bioinformatics methods for the metabolomics community.