NIST Upgrades Widely Used Database of Molecular 'Fingerprints' | NIST

NIST Upgrades Widely Used Database of Molecular 'Fingerprints' | NIST

NIST Upgrades Widely Used Database of Molecular “Fingerprints”

When scientists need to identify an unknown compound, they do what a police detective might do. They get fingerprints—in this case, the “molecular fingerprints” of the unknown compound—and run them through a database of fingerprints from known suspects to look for a match.

One of the world’s largest and most widely used databases of molecular fingerprints is the NIST Mass Spectral Library, and that library just got larger still. On June 6, NIST added fingerprints from more than 25,000 compounds to the library, bringing the total number to more than 265,000.

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