In
the present work, we address the issue of nontargeted screening
of organohalogenated chemicals in complex matrixes. A global strategy
aiming to seek halogenated signatures in full-scan high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS) fingerprints
was developed. The resulting all-in-one user-friendly application,
HaloSeeker 1.0, was developed to promote the accessibility of associated
in-house bioinformatics tools to a large audience. The ergonomic web
user interface avoids any interactions with the coding component while
allowing interactions with the data, including peak detection (features),
deconvolution, and comprehensive accompanying manual review for chemical
formula assignment. HaloSeeker 1.0 was successfully applied to a marine
sediment HRMS data set acquired on a liquid chromatography–heated
electrospray ionization [LC–HESI(−)] Orbitrap instrument
(R = 140 000 at m/z 200).
Among the 4532 detected features, 827 were paired and filtered in
165 polyhalogenated clusters. HaloSeeker was also compared to three
similar tools and showed the best performances. HaloSeeker’s
ability to filter and investigate halogenated signals was demonstrated
and illustrated by a potential homologue series with C12H
x
Br
y
Cl
z
O2 as a putative general formula.
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