CFM-ID: a web server for annotation, spectrum prediction and metabolite identification from tandem mass spectra

CFM-ID is a web server supporting three tasks associated with the interpretation of tandem mass spectra (MS/MS) for the purpose of automated metabolite identification: annotation of the peaks in a spectrum for a known chemical structure; prediction of spectra for a given chemical structure and putative metabolite identification–a predicted ranking of possible candidate structures for a target spectrum. The algorithms used for these tasks are based on Competitive Fragmentation Modeling (CFM), a recently introduced probabilistic generative model for the MS/MS fragmentation process that uses machine learning techniques to learn its parameters from data. These algorithms have been extensively tested on multiple datasets and have been shown to out-perform existing methods such as MetFrag and FingerId. This web server provides a simple interface for using these algorithms and a graphical display of the resulting annotations, spectra and structures. CFM-ID is made freely available at http://cfmid.wishartlab.com.