Comparative evaluation of eight software programs for alignment of gas chromatography-mass spectrometry chromatograms in metabolomics experiments.

Since retention times of compounds in GC-MS chromatograms always vary slightly from chromatogram to chromatogram, it is necessary to align chromatograms before comparing them in metabolomics experiments. Several software programs have been developed to automate this process. Here we report a comparative evaluation of the performance of eight programs using prepared samples of mixtures of chemicals, and an extract of tomato vines spiked with three concentrations of a mixture of alkanes.