Facilitating Imaging Mass Spectrometry of Microbial Specialized Metabolites with METASPACE.

Metabolite annotation from imaging mass spectrometry (imaging MS) data is a difficult undertaking that is extremely resource intensive. Here, we adapted METASPACE, cloud software for imaging MS metabolite annotation and data interpretation, to quickly annotate microbial specialized metabolites from high-resolution and high-mass accuracy imaging MS data. Compared with manual ion image and MS1 annotation, METASPACE is faster and, with the appropriate database, more accurate.