Package: MetaboCoreUtils
Authors: Johannes Rainer [aut, cre] (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6977-7147), Michael Witting [aut] (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1462-4426), Andrea Vicini [aut], Liesa Salzer [ctb] (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0761-0656), Sebastian Gibb [ctb] (https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7406-4443), Michael Stravs [ctb] (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1426-8572), Roger Gine [aut] (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0288-9619)
Last modified: 2023-04-25 14:39:21.326931
Compiled: Tue Apr 25 17:37:15 2023

1 Introduction

The MetaboCoreUtils defines metabolomics-related core functionality provided as low-level functions to allow a data structure-independent usage across various R packages (Rainer et al. 2022). This includes functions to calculate between ion (adduct) and compound mass-to-charge ratios and masses or functions to work with chemical formulas. The package provides also a set of adduct definitions and information on some commercially available internal standard mixes commonly used in MS experiments.

For a full list of function, see

library("MetaboCoreUtils")
ls(pos = "package:MetaboCoreUtils")
##  [1] "addElements"                "adductFormula"             
##  [3] "adductNames"                "adducts"                   
##  [5] "calculateKm"                "calculateKmd"              
##  [7] "calculateMass"              "calculateRkmd"             
##  [9] "containsElements"           "convertMtime"              
## [11] "correctRindex"              "countElements"             
## [13] "formula2mz"                 "indexRtime"                
## [15] "internalStandardMixNames"   "internalStandards"         
## [17] "isRkmd"                     "isotopicSubstitutionMatrix"
## [19] "isotopologues"              "mass2mz"                   
## [21] "multiplyElements"           "mz2mass"                   
## [23] "pasteElements"              "standardizeFormula"        
## [25] "subtractElements"

or the reference page on the package webpage.

2 Installation

The package can be installed with the BiocManager package. To install BiocManager use install.packages("BiocManager") and, after that, BiocManager::install("MetaboCoreUtils") to install this package.

3 Examples

The functions defined in this package utilise basic classes with the aim of being reused in packages that provide a more formal, high-level interface.

The examples below demonstrate the basic usage of the functions from the package.

library(MetaboCoreUtils)

3.1 Conversion between ion m/z and compound masses

The mass2mz and mz2mass functions allow to convert between compound masses and ion (adduct) mass-to-charge ratios (m/z). The MetaboCoreUtils package provides definitions of common ion adducts generated by electrospray ionization (ESI). These can be listed with the adductNames function.

adductNames()
##  [1] "[M+3H]3+"          "[M+2H+Na]3+"       "[M+H+Na2]3+"      
##  [4] "[M+Na3]3+"         "[M+2H]2+"          "[M+H+NH4]2+"      
##  [7] "[M+H+K]2+"         "[M+H+Na]2+"        "[M+C2H3N+2H]2+"   
## [10] "[M+2Na]2+"         "[M+C4H6N2+2H]2+"   "[M+C6H9N3+2H]2+"  
## [13] "[M+H]+"            "[M+Li]+"           "[M+2Li-H]+"       
## [16] "[M+NH4]+"          "[M+H2O+H]+"        "[M+Na]+"          
## [19] "[M+CH4O+H]+"       "[M+K]+"            "[M+C2H3N+H]+"     
## [22] "[M+2Na-H]+"        "[M+C3H8O+H]+"      "[M+C2H3N+Na]+"    
## [25] "[M+2K-H]+"         "[M+C2H6OS+H]+"     "[M+C4H6N2+H]+"    
## [28] "[2M+H]+"           "[2M+NH4]+"         "[2M+Na]+"         
## [31] "[2M+K]+"           "[2M+C2H3N+H]+"     "[2M+C2H3N+Na]+"   
## [34] "[3M+H]+"           "[M+H-NH3]+"        "[M+H-H2O]+"       
## [37] "[M+H-Hexose-H2O]+" "[M+H-H4O2]+"       "[M+H-CH2O2]+"     
## [40] "[M]+"

With that we can use the mass2mz function to calculate the m/z for a set of compounds assuming the generation of certain ions. In the example below we define masses for some theoretical compounds and calculate their expected m/z assuming that ions "[M+H]+" and "[M+Na]+" are generated.

masses <- c(123, 842, 324)
mass2mz(masses, adduct = c("[M+H]+", "[M+Na]+"))
##        [M+H]+  [M+Na]+
## [1,] 124.0073 145.9892
## [2,] 843.0073 864.9892
## [3,] 325.0073 346.9892

As a result we get a matrix with each row representing one compound and each column the m/z for one of the defined adducts. With the mz2mass we could perform the reverse calculation, i.e. from m/z to compound masses.

In addition, it is possible to calculate m/z values from chemical formulas with the formula2mz function. Below we calculate the m/z values for [M+H]+ and [M+Na]+ adducts from the chemical formulas of glucose and caffeine.

formula2mz(c("C6H12O6", "C8H10N4O2"), adduct = c("[M+H]+", "[M+Na]+"))
##             [M+H]+  [M+Na]+
## C6H12O6   181.0707 203.0526
## C8H10N4O2 195.0877 217.0696

3.2 Working with chemical formulas

The lack of consistency in the format in which chemical formulas are written poses a big problem comparing formulas coming from different resources. The MetaboCoreUtils package provides functions to standardize formulas as well as combine formulas or substract elements from formulas. Below we use an artificial example to show this functionality. First we standardize a chemical formula with the standardizeFormula function.

frml <- "Na3C4"
frml <- standardizeFormula(frml)
frml
##   Na3C4 
## "C4Na3"

Next we add "H2O" to the formula using the addElements function.

frml <- addElements(frml, "H2O")
frml
## [1] "C4H2ONa3"

We can also substract elements with the subtractElements function:

frml <- subtractElements(frml, "H")
frml
## [1] "C4HONa3"

Chemical formulas could also be multiplied with a scalar using the multiplyElements function. The counts for individual elements in a chemical formula can be calculated with the countElements function.

countElements(frml)
## $C4HONa3
##  C  H  O Na 
##  4  1  1  3

The function adductFormula allows in addition to create chemical formulas of specific adducts of compounds. Below we create chemical formulas for [M+H]+ and [M+Na]+ adducts for glucose and caffeine.

adductFormula(c("C6H12O6", "C8H10N4O2"), adduct = c("[M+H]+", "[M+Na]+"))
##           [M+H]+         [M+Na]+         
## C6H12O6   "[C6H13O6]+"   "[C6H12O6Na]+"  
## C8H10N4O2 "[C8H11N4O2]+" "[C8H10N4O2Na]+"

3.3 Kendrick mass defect calculation

Lipids and other homologous series based on fatty acyls can be found in data by using Kendrick mass defects (KMD) or referenced kendrick mass defects (RKMD). The MetaboCoreUtils package provides functions to calculate everything around Kendrick mass defects. The following example calculates the KMD and RKMD for three lipids (PC(16:0/18:1(9Z)), PC(16:0/18:0), PS(16:0/18:1(9Z))) and checks, if they fit the RKMD of PCs detected as [M+H]+ adducts.

lipid_masses <- c(760.5851, 762.6007, 762.5280)
calculateKmd(lipid_masses)
## [1] 0.7358239 0.7491732 0.6765544

Next the RKMD is calculated and checked if it fits to a specific range. RKMDs are either 0 or negative integers according to the number of double bonds in the lipids, e.g. -2 if two double bonds are present in the lipids.

lipid_rkmd <- calculateRkmd(lipid_masses)
isRkmd(lipid_rkmd)
## [1]  TRUE  TRUE FALSE

3.4 Retetion time indexing

Retention times are often not directly comparable between two LC-MS systems, even if nominally the same separation method is used. Conversion of retention times to retetion indices can overcome this issue. The MetaboCoreUtils package provides a function to perform this conversion. Below we use an example based on indexing with a homologoues series af N-Alkyl-pyridinium sulfonates (NAPS).

rti <- read.table(system.file("retentionIndex",
                              "rti.txt",
                              package = "MetaboCoreUtils"),
                  header = TRUE,
                  sep = "\t")

rtime <- read.table(system.file("retentionIndex",
                                "metabolites.txt",
                                package = "MetaboCoreUtils"),
                    header = TRUE,
                    sep = "\t")

A data.frame with the retetion times of the NAPS and their respective index value is required.

head(rti)
##   rtime rindex
## 1  1.14    100
## 2  1.18    200
## 3  1.38    300
## 4  2.11    400
## 5  4.34    500
## 6  5.92    600

The indexing is peformed using the function indexRtime.

rtime$rindex_r <- indexRtime(rtime$rtime, rti)

For comparison the manual calculated retention indices are included.

head(rtime)
##                name rtime rindex_manual  rindex_r
## 1        VITAMIN D2    NA            NA        NA
## 2          SQUALENE 15.66     1709.8765 1709.8765
## 3       4-COUMARATE  6.26      629.3103  629.3103
## 4         NONANOATE 11.73     1244.5783 1244.5783
## 5 ESTRADIOL-17ALPHA 10.27     1065.4321 1065.4321
## 6         CAPRYLATE 10.67     1114.8148 1114.8148

Conditions that shall be compared by the retention index might not perfectly match. In case the deviation is linear a simple two-point correction can be applied to the data. This is performed by the function correctRindex. The correction requires two reference standards and their measured RIs and reference RIs.

ref <- data.frame(rindex = c(1709.8765, 553.7975),
                  refindex = c(1700, 550))

rtime$rindex_cor <- correctRindex(rtime$rindex_r, ref)

4 Contributions

If you would like to contribute any low-level functionality, please open a GitHub issue to discuss it. Please note that any contributions should follow the style guide and will require an appropriate unit test.

If you wish to reuse any functions in this package, please just go ahead. If you would like any advice or seek help, please either open a GitHub issue.

Session information

## R version 4.3.0 RC (2023-04-13 r84269)
## Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
## Running under: Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS
## 
## Matrix products: default
## BLAS:   /home/biocbuild/bbs-3.17-bioc/R/lib/libRblas.so 
## LAPACK: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/lapack/liblapack.so.3.10.0
## 
## locale:
##  [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C              
##  [3] LC_TIME=en_GB              LC_COLLATE=C              
##  [5] LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8   
##  [7] LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C                 
##  [9] LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C            
## [11] LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C       
## 
## time zone: America/New_York
## tzcode source: system (glibc)
## 
## attached base packages:
## [1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     
## 
## other attached packages:
## [1] MetaboCoreUtils_1.8.0 BiocStyle_2.28.0     
## 
## loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
##  [1] digest_0.6.31       R6_2.5.1            bookdown_0.33      
##  [4] fastmap_1.1.1       xfun_0.39           clue_0.3-64        
##  [7] MsCoreUtils_1.12.0  cachem_1.0.7        knitr_1.42         
## [10] BiocGenerics_0.46.0 htmltools_0.5.5     rmarkdown_2.21     
## [13] stats4_4.3.0        cli_3.6.1           sass_0.4.5         
## [16] jquerylib_0.1.4     compiler_4.3.0      tools_4.3.0        
## [19] cluster_2.1.4       evaluate_0.20       bslib_0.4.2        
## [22] yaml_2.3.7          BiocManager_1.30.20 S4Vectors_0.38.0   
## [25] jsonlite_1.8.4      rlang_1.1.0         MASS_7.3-59

References

Rainer, Johannes, Andrea Vicini, Liesa Salzer, Jan Stanstrup, Josep M. Badia, Steffen Neumann, Michael A. Stravs, et al. 2022. “A Modular and Expandable Ecosystem for Metabolomics Data Annotation in R.” Metabolites 12 (2): 173. https://doi.org/10.3390/metabo12020173.