In the field of microbiology, identifying and comparing species of
bacteria from large communities is commonplace. Traditionally, this has
been achieved by DNA sequence analysis of isolates and/or metagenomics,
but this is a time-intensive and potentially costly process. Microbial
analysis via mass spectroscopy can be an effective and accurate process
for preliminary analysis, as well as significantly faster and less
expensive. We have developed a software package, HTMAD (³hat-mad²), to
process datasets of spectra from MALDI-TOF mass spectroscopy and to
provide analysis. In particular, we are using this process to identify
prophage-infected bacteria and for dereplication of bacteria across
multiple treatment groups.