Correcting for Naturally Occurring Mass Isotopologue Abundances in Stable-Isotope Tracing Experiments with PolyMID.

Jeong H, Yu Y, Johansson HJ, Schroeder FC, Lehtiö J, Vacanti NM

Metabolites 11 (5) - [2021-05-12; online 2021-05-12]

Stable-isotope tracing is a method to measure intracellular metabolic pathway utilization by feeding a cellular system a stable-isotope-labeled tracer nutrient. The power of the method to resolve differential pathway utilization is derived from the enrichment of metabolites in heavy isotopes that are synthesized from the tracer nutrient. However, the readout is complicated by the presence of naturally occurring heavy isotopes that are not derived from the tracer nutrient. Herein we present an algorithm, and a tool that applies it (PolyMID-Correct, part of the PolyMID software package), to computationally remove the influence of naturally occurring heavy isotopes. The algorithm is applicable to stable-isotope tracing data collected on low- and high- mass resolution mass spectrometers. PolyMID-Correct is open source and available under an MIT license.

PubMed 34066041

DOI 10.3390/metabo11050310

Crossref 10.3390/metabo11050310

pmc: PMC8151723
pii: metabo11050310