Fully automated non-targeted GC-MS data analysis

Abstract

Non-targeted analysis is applied in many different domains of analytical chemistry such as metabolomics, environmental and food analysis. In contrast to targeted analysis, non-targeted approaches take information of known and unknown compounds into account, are inherently more comprehensive and give a more holistic representation of the sample composition. 

Besides chromatographic techniques coupled to high resolution mass spectrometry such as LC-HRMS, gas chromatography with unit resolution mass spectrometry is still regularly utilized for non-targeted profiling or fingerprinting. This is mainly due to high separation power of GC and a wide availability and low costs of quadrupole mass spectrometers. 

Although several non-targeted approaches have been developed, data processing still remains a serious bottleneck. Baseline correction, feature detection, and retention time alignment can be prone to errors and time-consuming manual corrections are often necessary. We therefore developed an automated strategy to non-targeted GC-MS data avoiding feature detection and retention time alignment. The novel automated approach includes segmentation of chromatograms along the retention time axis, multiway decomposition of transformed segments followed by a supervised machine learning pipeline based on gradient boosted tree classification on the decomposed tensor [1, 2]. 

In order to make this novel data analysis strategy available to scientists without programming background, we developed a convenient browser based application. For the here presented interactive browser application the open source Python packages Bokeh and HoloViews were used. The application will be online freely available soon. 

[1] J. Vestner, G. de Revel, S. Krieger-Weber, D. Rauhut, M. du Toit, A. de Villiers, Toward automated chromatographic fingerprinting: A non-alignment approach to gas chromatography mass spectrometry data. Acta Chimica Acta 911 (2016) 42-58 
[2] K. Sirén, U. Fischer, J. Vestner, Automated supervised learning pipeline for non-targeted GC-MS data analysis. Analytica Chimica Acta: X 1 (2019) 100005

DOI:

Publication date: June 19, 2020

Issue: OENO IVAS 2019

Type: Article

Authors

Jochen Vestner, Kimmo Sirén, Pierre Le Brun, Ulrich Fischer

Institute for Viticulture and Oenology, DLR Rheinpfalz, Breitenweg 71, D-67435 Neustadt, Germany
Institut National Supérieur des Sciences Agronomiques de l’Alimentation et de l’ Environnement, Agrosup Dijon, 6 boulevard Docteur Petitjean, 21000 Dijon, France
Department of Chemistry, University of Kaiserslautern, Erwin-Schroedinger-Strasse 52, D-67663 Kaiserslautern

Contact the author

Keywords

metabolomics, non-targeted, GC-MS, exploratory data analysis 

Tags

IVES Conference Series | OENO IVAS 2019

Citation

Related articles…

Influence of weather and climatic conditions on the viticultural production in Croatia

The research includes an analysis of the impact of weather conditions on phenological development of the vine and grape quality, through monitoring of four experimental cultivars (Chardonnay, Graševina, Merlot and Plavac mali) over two production years. In each experimental vineyard, which were evenly distributed throughout the regions of Slavonia and The Croatian Danube, Croatian Uplands,

Using δ13C and hydroscapes as a tool for discriminating cultivar specific drought response

Measurement of carbon isotope discrimination in berry juice sugars at maturity (δ13C) provides an integrated assessment of water use efficiency (WUE) during the period of berry ripening, and when collected over multiple seasons can be used as an indication of drought stress response. Berry juice δ13C measurements were carried out on 48 different varieties planted in a common garden experiment in Bordeaux, France from 2014 through 2021 and were paired with midday and predawn leaf water potential measurements on the same vines in a subset of six varieties. The aim was to discriminate a large panel of varieties based on their stomatal behaviour and potentially identify hydraulic traits characterizing drought tolerance by comparing δ13C and hydroscapes (the visualisation of plant stomatal behaviour as a response to predawn water potential). Cluster analysis found that δ13C values are likely affected by the differing phenology of each variety, resulting in berry ripening of different varieties taking place under different stress conditions within the same year. We accounted for these phenological differences and found that cluster analysis based on specific δ13C metrics created a classification of varieties that corresponds well to our current empirical understanding of their relative drought tolerances. In addition, we analysed the water potential regulation of the subset of six varieties (using the hydroscape approach) and found that it was well correlated with some δ13C metrics. Surprisingly, a variety’s water potential regulation (specifically its minimum critical leaf water potential under water deficit) was strongly correlated to δ13C values under well-watered conditions, suggesting that base WUE may have a stronger impact on drought tolerance than WUE under water deficit. These results give strong insights on the innate WUE of a very large panel of varieties and suggest that studies of drought tolerance should include traits expressed under non-limiting conditions.

Impact of climate change on the viticultural climate of the Protected Designation of Origin “Jumilla” (SE Spain)

Protected Designation of Origin “Jumilla” (PDO Jumilla) is located in the Spanish provinces of Albacete and Murcia, in the South-eastern part of the Iberian Peninsula, where most of the models predict a severe impact of climate change in next decades. PDO Jumilla covers an area of 247,054 hectares, of which more than 22,000 hectares

A predictive model of spatial Eca variability in the vineyard to support the monitoring of plant status

[lwp_divi_breadcrumbs home_text="IVES" use_before_icon="on" before_icon="||divi||400" module_id="publication-ariane" _builder_version="4.19.4" _module_preset="default" module_text_align="center" module_font_size="16px" text_orientation="center"...

A better understanding of the climate effect on anthocyanin accumulation in grapes using a machine learning approach

The current climate changes are directly threatening the balance of the vineyard at harvest time. The maturation period of the grapes is shifted to the middle of the summer, at a time when radiation and air temperature are at their maximum. In this context, the implementation of corrective practices becomes problematic. Unfortunately, our knowledge of the climate effect on the quality of different grape varieties remains very incomplete to guide these choices. During the Innovine project, original experiments were carried out on Syrah to study the combined effects of normal or high air temperature and varying degrees of exposure of the berries to the sun. Berries subjected to these different conditions were sampled and analyzed throughout the maturation period. Several quality characteristics were determined, including anthocyanin content. The objective of the experiments was to investigate which climatic determinants were most important for anthocyanin accumulation in the berries. Temperature and irradiance data, observed over time with a very thin discretization step, are called functional data in statistics. We developed the procedure SpiceFP (Sparse and Structured Procedure to Identify Combined Effects of Functional Predictors) to explain the variations of a scalar response variable (a grape berry quality variable for example) by two or three functional predictors (as temperature and irradiance) in a context of joint influence of these predictors. Particular attention was paid to the interpretability of the results. Analysis of the data using SpiceFP identified a negative impact of morning combinations of low irradiance (lower than about 100 μmol m−2 s−1 or 45 μmol m−2 s−1 depending on the advanced-delayed state of the berries) and high temperature (higher than 25oC). A slight difference associated with overnight temperature occurred between these effects identified in the morning.