Abstract

MetaboLights - The EMBL-EBI Metabolomics Resource

Kenneth Haug, Project Manager and Software Engineer, European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), European Molecular Biology Laboratory

The EMBL-EBI metabolomics resource MetaboLights is now entering the next phase. Over the next few years MetaboLights will exploit open-source tools and investigate workflows for the commonest approaches used in metabolomics, to provide a set of online-analysis workflows. The team will add new interfaces to support the data flow from local Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS). MetaboLights will specifically provide a JAVA library (API) to enable creation of valid Investigation/Study/Assay tabular format (ISA-tab) data structures. MetaboLights will also introduce an online staging area, ‘MetaboLights Labs’, where researchers can upload their data and then run key data processing (e.g. alignment, peak picking, batch corrections) or analysis (e.g. assignment of identified metabolites) tasks inside MetaboLights. The system will use information of identified compounds within a dataset as prior information for identifying known unknowns, which is one of the biggest problems associated with metabolomic datasets.