Sharing and community curation of mass spectrometry data with Global Natural Products Social Molecular Networking

Realizing the potential of the diverse chemistries of natural products in biotechnology and medicine has been limited by manual analysis of experimental data through mining mass spectrometry knowledge solely captured in literature. While mass spectrometry techniques have proven well-suited for high-throughput analyses of natural products, there is no infrastructure for researchers to systematically share knowledge or analyze data. We present Global Natural Products Social molecular networking (GNPS, http://gnps.ucsd.edu), an open-access knowledge base for sharing, analysis, and community curation of raw, processed, and identified tandem mass (MS/MS) spectrometry data. GNPS further organizes, curates, and freely redistributes community-wide reference MS libraries, as well as provides a data-driven social networking infrastructure. Finally, GNPS introduces the concept of living data through crowdsourced curation of reference libraries and continuous reanalysis of public data