How do the adducts I choose affect my analysis?

In order for Progenesis QI to deconvolute detected ions into whole compounds, the correct adducts must be selected. Selecting too many or too few adducts has consequences that will impact on your analysis.

What happens if I select too many adducts?

This can cause unrelated ions to be incorrectly deconvoluted together into a single compound, which in turn can cause false positive hits for identifications, but also incorrect quantitative information.

Where ions can't be deconvoluted and so the neutral mass cannot be determined, when searching for IDs, Progenesis QI will determine possible theoretical neutral masses based on the adduct selection in order to retrieve possible identifications - this also leads to false positive identifications.

In addition to false positive identifications and quantitative information, selecting too many adducts can adversely affect software performance.

What happens if I select too few adducts?

If too few adducts are selected, Progenesis QI will be unable to correctly deconvolute ions into compounds - this will result in the same compound being treated as multiple different species within the compound list. This can lead to false positive quantitative results, and can also lead to false positive identifications since an unspecified adduct could be identified as the [M+H] component of another compound.