Mass spectrometry is a scientific technique for measuring the mass to charge ratio of ions. It is often coupled to chromatographic techniques such as
gas- or
liquid chromatography and has found widespread adoption in the fields of
analytical chemistry and
biochemistry where it can be used to identify and characterize
small molecules and
proteins (
proteomics). The large volume of data produced in a typical mass spectrometry experiment requires that computers be used for data storage and processing. Over the years, different manufacturers of mass spectrometers have developed various proprietary data formats for handling such data which makes it difficult for academic scientists to directly manipulate their data. To address this limitation, several
open,
XML-based data formats have recently been developed by the
Trans-Proteomic Pipeline at the
Institute for Systems Biology to facilitate data manipulation and innovation in the public sector. These data formats are described here.