SIRIUS 4.4 released

We are happy to announce that SIRIUS 4.4 is finally released. (Unfortunately, the MacOS version will have to wait a few more days.) There have been numerous changes and improvements, only few of which can be mentioned here.

Probably the biggest change is that SIRIUS 4.4 now reads mzML files (“centroided” data) and processes complete LC-MS/MS datasets. You can use ProteoWizard to transform your dataset to mzML. This does not only make things easier for you; it also allows SIRIUS to extract isotope patterns and adduct information more thoroughly from the MS1 data. SIRIUS 4.4 also supports multi-run datasets and aligns runs.

If you are using the graphical user interface (GUI) you no longer have to care about installing (the correct version of) Java. It is part of the installed SIRIUS software.

SIRIUS 4.4 uses the same project space for the command-line (CLI) and the GUI version, allowing you to use the SIRIUS GUI to browse through results computed with the CLI. The GUI also allows you to save your project and reload it later, including all previously computed results. Finally, you can export summary CSV and mzTab-M files for downstream analysis.

CSI:FingerID also had some updates:

  • Additional large molecular substructures: Have a look at the Fingerprint tab in the SIRIUS GUI, filter for large substructures.
  • Standardization of molecular structures (mesomerism, charge etc) through PubChem. This does not only improve identification statistics by a few percentage points, but also gets rid of certain cases where CSI:FingerID was doing “strange things”. Unfortunately, PubChem keeps changing the standardization without giving big notice, so some issues remain; but the current situation is definitely better than no standardization.

More stuff:

  • There is currently no version for MacOS; we are sorry. Somehow, MacOS does not like our multithreading. At present, we do not have access to a Mac for debugging, thanks to Corona.
  • Please report bugs using the SIRIUS GitHub repository or . There will be numerous such bugs, as SIRIUS 4.4 again carries major improvements and transformations under the hood. Help us to make SIRIUS better.
  • To allow for a smooth transition, you can continue to use SIRIUS 4.0.1 and the corresponding CSI:FingerID web service for a couple of weeks.
  • SIRIUS 4.4 integrates ZODIAC and CANOPUS, see the separate news.
  • passatutto is integrated into SIRIUS 4.4, allowing you to generate your own spectral library decoy database for FDR estimation.
  • We have included a beautiful interactive fragmentation tree viewer.
  • There may be a few more releases of SIRIUS 4.4.x that ship those things which are done in principle.
  • Finally, we have not reported the number of CSI:FingerID queries for some time, so here we go: There have been 47 million CSI:FingerID queries. (Plus a few million we lost through a little scripting bug. Our bad.) That is roughly one query every 1.5 seconds since we reported one million queries in Feb 2018.