The NORMAN Suspect List Exchange (NORMAN-SLE): facilitating European and worldwide collaboration on suspect screening in high resolution mass spectrometry

in Environmental Sciences Europe (2022), 34(1), 104

Abstract Background The NORMAN Association ( https://www.norman-network.com/ ) initiated the NORMAN Suspect List Exchange (NORMAN-SLE https://www.norman-network.com/nds/SLE/ ) in 2015, following the ... [more ▼]

Abstract Background The NORMAN Association ( https://www.norman-network.com/ ) initiated the NORMAN Suspect List Exchange (NORMAN-SLE https://www.norman-network.com/nds/SLE/ ) in 2015, following the NORMAN collaborative trial on non-target screening of environmental water samples by mass spectrometry. Since then, this exchange of information on chemicals that are expected to occur in the environment, along with the accompanying expert knowledge and references, has become a valuable knowledge base for “suspect screening” lists. The NORMAN-SLE now serves as a FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) chemical information resource worldwide. Results The NORMAN-SLE contains 99 separate suspect list collections (as of May 2022) from over 70 contributors around the world, totalling over 100,000 unique substances. The substance classes include per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), pharmaceuticals, pesticides, natural toxins, high production volume substances covered under the European REACH regulation (EC: 1272/2008), priority contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) and regulatory lists from NORMAN partners. Several lists focus on transformation products (TPs) and complex features detected in the environment with various levels of provenance and structural information. Each list is available for separate download. The merged, curated collection is also available as the NORMAN Substance Database (NORMAN SusDat). Both the NORMAN-SLE and NORMAN SusDat are integrated within the NORMAN Database System (NDS). The individual NORMAN-SLE lists receive digital object identifiers (DOIs) and traceable versioning via a Zenodo community ( https://zenodo.org/communities/norman-sle ), with a total of \textgreater 40,000 unique views, \textgreater 50,000 unique downloads and 40 citations (May 2022). NORMAN-SLE content is progressively integrated into large open chemical databases such as PubChem ( https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ ) and the US EPA’s CompTox Chemicals Dashboard ( https://comptox.epa.gov/dashboard/ ), enabling further access to these lists, along with the additional functionality and calculated properties these resources offer. PubChem has also integrated significant annotation content from the NORMAN-SLE, including a classification browser ( 101 ). Conclusions The NORMAN-SLE offers a specialized service for hosting suspect screening lists of relevance for the environmental community in an open, FAIR manner that allows integration with other major chemical resources. These efforts foster the exchange of information between scientists and regulators, supporting the paradigm shift to the “one substance, one assessment” approach. New submissions are welcome via the contacts provided on the NORMAN-SLE website ( https://www.norman-network.com/nds/SLE/ ). [less ▲]

Empowering large chemical knowledge bases for exposomics: PubChemLite meets MetFrag

in Journal of Cheminformatics (2021), 13(1), 19

Abstract Compound (or chemical) databases are an invaluable resource for many scientific disciplines. Exposomics researchers need to find and identify relevant chemicals that cover the entirety of ... [more ▼]

Abstract Compound (or chemical) databases are an invaluable resource for many scientific disciplines. Exposomics researchers need to find and identify relevant chemicals that cover the entirety of potential (chemical and other) exposures over entire lifetimes. This daunting task, with over 100 million chemicals in the largest chemical databases, coupled with broadly acknowledged knowledge gaps in these resources, leaves researchers faced with too much—yet not enough—information at the same time to perform comprehensive exposomics research. Furthermore, the improvements in analytical technologies and computational mass spectrometry workflows coupled with the rapid growth in databases and increasing demand for high throughput “big data” services from the research community present significant challenges for both data hosts and workflow developers. This article explores how to reduce candidate search spaces in non-target small molecule identification workflows, while increasing content usability in the context of environmental and exposomics analyses, so as to profit from the increasing size and information content of large compound databases, while increasing efficiency at the same time. In this article, these methods are explored using PubChem, the NORMAN Network Suspect List Exchange and the in silico fragmentation approach MetFrag. A subset of the PubChem database relevant for exposomics, PubChemLite, is presented as a database resource that can be (and has been) integrated into current workflows for high resolution mass spectrometry. Benchmarking datasets from earlier publications are used to show how experimental knowledge and existing datasets can be used to detect and fill gaps in compound databases to progressively improve large resources such as PubChem, and topic-specific subsets such as PubChemLite. PubChemLite is a living collection, updating as annotation content in PubChem is updated, and exported to allow direct integration into existing workflows such as MetFrag. The source code and files necessary to recreate or adjust this are jointly hosted between the research parties (see data availability statement). This effort shows that enhancing the FAIRness (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Reusability) of open resources can mutually enhance several resources for whole community benefit. The authors explicitly welcome additional community input on ideas for future developments. [less ▲]

Empowering Large Chemical Knowledge Bases for Exposomics: PubChemLite Meets MetFrag

E-print/Working paper (2020)