Tools and resources for metabolomics research community: A 2017–2018 update

The scale at which MS‐ and NMR‐based platforms generate metabolomics datasets for both research, core, and clinical facilities to address challenges in the various sciences—ranging from biomedical to agricultural—is underappreciated. Thus, metabolomics efforts spanning microbe, environment, plant, animal, and human systems have led to continual and concomitant growth of in silico resources for analysis and interpretation of these datasets. These software tools, resources, and databases drive the field forward to help keep pace with the amount of data being generated and the sophisticated and diverse analytical platforms that are being used to generate these metabolomics datasets. To address challenges in data preprocessing, metabolite annotation, statistical interrogation, visualization, interpretation, and integration, the metabolomics and informatics research community comes up with hundreds of tools every year. The purpose of the present review is to provide a brief and useful summary of more than 95 metabolomics tools, software, and databases that were either developed or significantly improved during 2017–2018. We hope to see this review help readers, developers, and researchers to obtain informed access to these thorough lists of resources for further improvisation, implementation, and application in due course of time.     

Kinetics of oxidation of hydrazine by a dioxo-bridged dimanganese(III,IV) complex ion

In aqueous acidic media containing an excess of Hbipy⁺–bipy buffer in the pH 3.5–4.5 range, the complex ion [(bipy)₂Mn^III(-O)₂Mn^IV(bipy)₂]³⁺ (1) coexists in rapid equilibrium with its diaqua derivative [Mn^III,IV ₂ (-O)₂(bipy)₃(H₂O)₂]³⁺ (1a) (bipy = 2,2-bipyridine). An excess of N₂H₅ ⁺ quantitatively reduces the mixture to Mn^II, itself being oxidised to N₂. The first order rate constant, k _o decreases with increasing C _bipy (C _bipy = [Hbipy⁺] + [bipy]) but increases with increasing [N₂H₅ ⁺] and [H⁺]. The observed kinetic dependence can be explained in terms of a reaction between (1a) and N₂H₅ ⁺. Replacement of solvent H₂O with D₂O decreases k _o substantially and the effect suggests simultaneous transfer of an electron and a proton in the rate-determining step. The relevance of this observation to the delayed oxidation of H₂O in the hydrazine-treated photosystem II is discussed.