US Patent 7684934 Pattern recognition of whole cell mass spectra

A method for reproducibly analyzing mass spectra from different sample sources is provided. The method deconvolutes the complex spectra by collapsing multiple peaks of different molecular mass that originate from the same molecular fragment into a single peak. The differences in molecular mass are apparent differences caused by different charge states of the fragment and/or different metal ion adducts and/or reactant products of one or more of the charge states. The deconvoluted spectrum is compared to a library of mass spectra acquired from samples of known identity to unambiguously determine the identity of one or more components of the sample undergoing analysis.