Rule-based mass spectrum prediction and ranking: Applications to structure elucidation of novel marine sterols

A novel, computer aided approach to the interpretation of mass spectra is documented by its application to a series of recently isolated marine sterols. The method consists of construction of biosynthetically plausible candidate structures, prediction of their major mass spectral fragmentation paths using class-specific rules derived from a training set of known compounds, and a system of ranking candidate structures based on a comparison of the predicted and observed spectra.