Revealing misannotated electrospray ionization artifacts: A systematic pipeline for heterodimer detection in untargeted metabolomics

Heterodimers are non-covalent adducts formed between two co-eluting molecules during electrospray ionization (ESI). Despite their frequent occurrence in MS-based untargeted metabolomics and lipidomics analysis, these artifacts are often misinterpreted as genuine metabolites or entirely overlooked, l...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Mamani-Huanca, Maricruz, Gradillas, Ana, Barbas, Coral, González-Ruiz, Víctor
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2026
País:España
Institución:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repositorio:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/424956
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/424956
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Electrospray ionization artifacts
Untargeted datasets
Heterodimers
CE-MS and LC-MS
Misannotation
Dark metabolome
Lipidomics
Descripción
Sumario:Heterodimers are non-covalent adducts formed between two co-eluting molecules during electrospray ionization (ESI). Despite their frequent occurrence in MS-based untargeted metabolomics and lipidomics analysis, these artifacts are often misinterpreted as genuine metabolites or entirely overlooked, leading to inflated feature counts, compromised annotation accuracy, and contributing to the so-called dark metabolome.