MetDIA: Targeted Metabolite Extraction of Multiplexed MS/MS Spectra Generated by Data-Independent Acquisition

With recent advances in mass spectrometry, there is an increased interest in data-independent acquisition (DIA) techniques for metabolomics. With DIA technique, all metabolite ions are sequentially selected and isolated using a wide window to generate multiplexed MS/MS spectra. Therefore, DIA strategy enables a continuous and unbiased acquisition of all metabolites and increases the data dimensionality, but presents a challenge to data analysis due to the loss of the direct link between precursor ion and fragment ions. However, very few DIA data processing methods are developed for metabolomics application. Here, we developed a new DIA data analysis approach, namely, MetDIA, for targeted extraction of metabolites from multiplexed MS/MS spectra generated using DIA technique. MetDIA approach considers each metabolite in the spectral library as an analysis target. Ion chromatograms for each metabolite (both precursor ion and fragment ions) and MS2 spectra are readily detected, extracted, and scored for metabolite identification, referred as metabolite-centric identification. A minimum metabolite-centric identification score responsible for 1% false positive rate of identification is determined as 0.8 using fully C-13 labeled biological extracts. Finally, the comparisons of our MetDIA method with data-dependent acquisition (DDA) method demonstrated that MetDIA could significantly detect more metabolites in biological samples, and is more accurate and sensitive for metabolite identifications. The MetDIA program and the metabolite spectral library is freely available on the Internet.