OpenTIMS, TimsPy, and TimsR: Open and Easy Access to timsTOF Raw Data.

The Bruker timsTOF Pro is an instrument that couples trapped ion mobility spectrometry (TIMS) to high-resolution time-of-flight (TOF) mass spectrometry (MS). For proteomics, lipidomics, and metabolomics applications, the instrument is typically interfaced with a liquid chromatography (LC) system. The resulting LC-TIMS-MS data sets are, in general, several gigabytes in size and are stored in the proprietary Bruker Tims data format (TDF). The raw data can be accessed using proprietary binaries in C, C++, and Python on Windows and Linux operating systems. Here we introduce a suite of computer programs for data accession, including OpenTIMS, TimsR, and TimsPy. OpenTIMS is a C++ library capable of reading Bruker TDF files. It opens up Bruker's proprietary codebase. TimsPy and TimsR build on top of OpenTIMS, enabling swift and user-friendly data access to the raw data with Python and R. Both programs are available under a GPL3 license on all major platforms, extending the possibility to interact with timsTOF data to macOS. Additionally, OpenTIMS is capable of translating Bruker data into HDF5 files that can be easily analyzed from Python with the vaex module. OpenTIMS and TimsPy therefore provide easy and quick access to Bruker timsTOF raw data.

IsoSpec2: Ultrafast Fine Structure Calculator.

High-resolution mass spectrometry becomes increasingly available with its ability to resolve the fine isotopic structure of measured analytes. It allows for high-sensitivity spectral deconvolution, leading to less false-positive identifications. Analytes can be identified by comparing their theoretical isotopic signal with the observed peaks. Necessary calculations are, however, computationally demanding and lead to long processing times. For wheat (trictum oestivum) alone, Uniprot holds more than 142 000 candidate protein sequences. This is doubled upon sequence reversal for identification FDR estimation and further multiplied by performing in silico digestion into peptides. The same peptide might originate from more than one protein, which reduces the overall number of sequences to be calculated. However, it is still huge. IsoSpec2 can perform these calculations fast. Compared to IsoSpec1, the algorithm is simpler, orders of magnitude faster, and offers more flexibility for the developers of algorithms for raw data analysis. It is freely available under a 2-clause BSD license, with bindings for the C++, C, R, and Python programming languages.

masstodon: A Tool for Assigning Peaks and Modeling Electron Transfer Reactions in Top-Down Mass Spectrometry.

Top-down mass spectrometry methods are becoming continuously more popular in the effort to describe the proteome. They rely on the fragmentation of intact protein ions inside the mass spectrometer. Among the existing fragmentation methods, electron transfer dissociation is known for its precision and wide coverage of different cleavage sites. However, several side reactions can occur under electron transfer dissociation (ETD) conditions, including nondissociative electron transfer and proton transfer reaction. Evaluating their extent can provide more insight into reaction kinetics as well as instrument operation. Furthermore, preferential formation of certain reaction products can reveal important structural information. To the best of our knowledge, there are currently no tools capable of tracing and analyzing the products of these reactions in a systematic way. In this Article, we present in detail masstodon: a computer program for assigning peaks and interpreting mass spectra. Besides being a general purpose tool, masstodon also offers the possibility to trace the products of reactions occurring under ETD conditions and provides insights into the parameters driving them. It is available free of charge under the GNU AGPL V3 public license.