“Despite being information rich, the vast majority of untargeted mass spectrometry data are underutilized; most analytes are not used for downstream interpretation or reanalysis after publication. The inability to dive into these rich raw mass spectrometry datasets is due to the limited flexibility and scalability of existing software tools. Here we introduce a new language, the Mass Spectrometry Query Language (MassQL), and an accompanying software ecosystem that addresses these issues by enabling the community to directly query mass spectrometry data with an expressive set of user-defined mass spectrometry patterns.”

Find the paper and full list of authors in Nature Methods.