Molecular weight calculator for organic compounds in biotechnology
Author and article information
Abstract
Automated calculation of molecular weight of chemical compounds would provide savings in time and effort, especially in handling large number of compounds common in chemical or biotechnology workflow. In this work, a molecular weight calculator was developed using MATLAB and is capable of handling the chemical elements: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulphur that constitute organic compounds common in biotechnology. Such compounds would typically come across as either substrates or products of fermentation, where automated calculation of molecular weight would feed into mass/charge calculations that facilitate workflow involving their mass spectrometric detection. Specifically, chemical formulas of molecular ion are necessary information for identifying particular mass peaks in mass spectrometry, to which automated molecular weight calculation would greatly simplify peak identification. Thus, the molecular weight calculator developed in this work could be used as a subroutine for more complex software that provides identification of mass peaks in mass spectrometry workflow detecting organic compounds in fermentation.
Cite this as
2019. Molecular weight calculator for organic compounds in biotechnology. PeerJ Preprints 7:e27836v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27836v1Author comment
This is a preprint describing a software.
Sections
Supplemental Information
Software for molecular weight calculator
This is a zip file comprising the different MATLAB m files that together function as a molecular weight calculator.
Additional Information
Competing Interests
The author declares that they have no competing interests.
Author Contributions
Wenfa Ng analyzed the data, prepared figures and/or tables, authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.
Data Deposition
The following information was supplied regarding data availability:
The functional software is provided as a zip file that accompanies the manuscript. It is a collection of several MATLAB m files that together constitute a functional software.
Funding
The author received no funding for this work.
