5 Output

Tracegroomer generates tab delimited files that contain:

• a first column named "ID" with the variables (metabolites or isotopologues depending on the metric in the file)
• the rest of the column names correspond to the samples names

If the isotopologues' absolute values are provided, 4 files are generated:

1. isotopologues' absolute values
2. isotopologue proportions
3. metabolite mean enrichment
4. metabolite total abundances

In particular cases (e.g. VIB-MEC data), the data lacks isotopologues' absolute values, but the other metrics are thoroughly present in the data. In such cases the TraceGroomer output consists of three files:

1. isotopologue proportions
2. metabolite mean enrichment
3. metabolite total abundances

These files are always tab delimited, but their extensions (csv or tsv or txt) can be changed by using the -ox parameter in the command line. See also our test with available data documentation.