Project topics for the course Special Course in Bioinformatics II : Machine Learning in Bioinformatics

Background: In untargeted metabolomics studies complex biological sample with possibly thousands of molecules are encountered. Tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) is a widely used technique to extract patterns from biological samples to identify the molecules in it. However, the sensitivity of a mass spectrometer depends on the ability to reduce the complexity of the biological sample, e.g. to prevent MS/MS spectra representing more than one molecule. Liquid chromatography (LC) is a technique to do such complexity reduction. If a properly prepared biological sample is provided to a LC column the molecules in the sample will interact differently with the columns stationary phase. This makes the molecules separating as a function of time depending on their molecular properties. Some molecules are passing faster through the column than others. The time at which a molecule leaves the column is called the retention time.