AlpsNMR: an R package for signal processing of fully untargeted NMR-based metabolomics

Abstract

Summary: Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)-based metabolomics is widely used to obtain metabolic fingerprints of biological systems. While targeted workflows require previous knowledge of metabolites, prior to statistical analysis, untargeted approaches remain a challenge. Computational tools dealing with fully untargeted NMR-based metabolomics are still scarce or not user-friendly. Therefore, we developed AlpsNMR (Automated spectraL Processing System for NMR), an R package that provides automated and efficient signal processing for untargeted NMR metabolomics. AlpsNMR includes spectra loading, metadata handling, automated outlier detection, spectra alignment and peak-picking, integration and normalization. The resulting output can be used for further statistical analysis. AlpsNMR proved effective in detecting metabolite changes in a test case. The tool allows less experienced users to easily implement this workflow from spectra to a ready-to-use dataset in their routines.

Availability and implementation: The AlpsNMR R package and tutorial is freely available to download from http://github.com/sipss/AlpsNMR under the MIT license.

Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.