Retention time prediction software

 Easy and accurate high-performance liquid chromatography retention prediction with different gradients, flow rates, and instruments by back-calculation of gradient and flow rate profiles  Paul G. Boswell, Jonathan R. Schellenberg, Peter W. Carr, Jerry D. Cohen, Adrian D. Hegeman

An implementation and source code is available here. 

".. This approach provides a simple way to correct for all instrument-related factors affecting retention, allowing dramatically streamlined and improved retention projection across gradients, flow rates, and HPLC instruments."

And here are the limitations:
1) Solvent A must be 0.1% formic acid in water and solvent B must be pure acetonitrile
2) The column temperature must be set to 35 °C
3) The stationary phase must be Waters Acquity BEH C18 (1.7 μm, 130 Å)
4) The  retention database only contains 35 compounds.

Dancing with the yeast cells

Some guys from New Zeland at the Centre for Microbial Innovation designed what I think is the funniest metabolomics experiment so far. They compared the metabolome of yeast cells growing in defined liquid medium exposed to music and silence. The biomass production was decreased by 14% when the cells were exposed to sonic stimuli, and the metabolite profile was also significantly different compared with silence.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/e6143q34160g633r/

Unfortunately, they didn't specify in their methods what kind of music they used. Was it Britney Spears or Enrique Iglesias? that might clearly explain the lower biomass production... I bet they also activated signaling for apoptosis.

Clearly, a great candidate paper for the Ig Nobel Prize ;-)

Global Metabolomics Market to Reach $863.8 Million by 2017, According to a New Report by Global Industry Analysts, Inc

http://www.prweb.com/releases/metabolomics_metabonomics/biomarker_discovery/prweb8519517.htm

Announcing the Metabolomics Forum

We would like to invite you to use the Metabolomics Forum, which we created recently : http://metabolomics-forum.com/
The Metabolomics Forum is open to everyone for questions and discussions on the topic of metabolomics. Separate forum categories regarding hardware, software, sample preparation and identification topics have been created.

I'm looking forward to seeing you on the forum! 

LC/MS raw data conversion just got easier!

ProteoWizard's msconvert now supports the conversion of Agilent, Bruker, Thermo, Waters and AB Sciex file formats into mzML/mzXML - all the necessary vendor readers are included in the distribution. No additional software is needed.

Q-TOF

Has anybody (a lucky guy!) tested on a regular basis different Q-TOF instruments for metabolomics applications? what's your experience with any of these instruments: SYNAPT G2, maXis, 6540 UHD and TripleTOF 5600?

Interesting metabolomics review in Toxicological Sciences

Metabolomics in toxicology: preclinical and clinical applications.  
Robertson DG, Watkins PB, Reily MD.

"... Experience has shown that when data analysis ends with colorful PCA or partial least squares plots, the real impact of a metabolomics study is not realized."    :)