Category Archives: News

ChemTastesDB: A Curated Database of Molecular Tastants

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ChemTastesDB is a database that includes curated information of 4075 molecular tastants. ChemTastesDB is distributed to the scientific community to expand the information of molecular tastants, which could assist the analysis of the relationships between molecular structure and taste, as well as in silico (QSAR/QSPR) studies for taste prediction.

The latest version of ChemTastesDB (released in March 2025) is available at the following link: https://zenodo.org/records/15051366

The 4075 molecular tastants are categorized into one of the five basic tastes (sweet, bitter, umami sour and salty), as well as to other classes related to non-basic tastes (tasteless, non-sweet, non-bitter, multitaste and miscellaneous). The molecules are categorized into following ten classes: sweet (1313), bitter (1615), umami (220), sour (49), salty (16), multitaste (179), tasteless (232), non-sweet (304), non-bitter (28), and miscellaneous (119).

Examples of QSPR approaches for the prediction of molecular taste are given in the following publication: Rojas, C., Abril-González, M., Ballabio, D. & García, F. (2025). ChemTastesPredictor: An ensemble of machine learning classifiers to predict the taste of molecular tastants. Chemometrics and Intelligent Laboratory Systems. 261, 105380. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemolab.2025.105380.

Cosmic spikes and saturated pixels in hyperspectral Raman spectroscopy

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ARCHER is a new algorithm for automatic removal of cosmic spikes and saturated pixels in hyperspectral Raman spectroscopy; here the full open access publication: Cruz Muñoz, E., Ballabio, D., Amigo, J,M. (2025) ARCHER. A new algorithm for Automatic Removal of Cosmic Spikes and Saturated Pixels in Hyperspectral Raman spectroscopy, Spectrochimica Acta Part A: Molecular and Biomolecular Spectroscopy, 336, 126041 [link]

PhD defense by Emmanuel Cruz

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Emmanuel Cruz brilliantly defended his PhD thesis ‘Geochemical Study of Pyrite Persistence in Sedimentary Records’ at the Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca. Emmanuel undertook an impressive interdisciplinary effort, bridging two fields that often speak different scientific “languages.” He facilitated their interaction by developing new analytical methods and applying techniques such as RAMAN imaging, Design of Experiments (DoE), and chemometrics to investigate chemical factors linked to climate change. To top it all off, Emmanuel earned his PhD in Chemical, Geological, and Environmental Sciences with honors! The PhD thesis is available for downlaod here: https://michem.unimib.it/download/phd-thesis/

Molecular fingerprints for exploring the chemical space of natural products

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We evaluated the effectiveness of multiple types of fingerprints for representing the chemical space of natural substances. The code and data to reproduce the results are also available in the study: Boldini, D., Ballabio, D., Consonni, V., Todeschini, R., Grisoni, F., Sieber, S.A. (2024) Effectiveness of molecular fingerprints for exploring the chemical space of natural products, Journal of Cheminformatics 16, 35 (2024), https://doi.org/10.1186/s13321-024-00830-3

A new metric to assess the degree of accuracy of consensus predictions

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We proposed a new heuristic metric to assess the degree of accuracy of consensus predictions. It can assist the mapping of reliability in prediction and enhance the delineation of a safe zone, where consensus predictions are expected to have better accuracy. All details are available in the following publication, have a look! We also provide data and code to calculate it, here!

V. Consonni, R. Todeschini, M. Orlandi, D. Ballabio (2024) Kernel-based mapping of reliability in predictions for consensus modelling, Chemometrics and Intelligent Laboratory Systems 246, 105085, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemolab.2024.105085

Chemometrics to predict the taste of molecules

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We have published a comprehensive review on classification-based chemoemtric approaches to predict taste of molecules, have a look!

Rojas, C., Ballabio, D., Consonni, V., Suárez-Estrella, D., Todeschini, R. (2023) Classification-based machine learning approaches to predict the taste of molecules: a review. Food Research International, 171, 113036 [link]

Kohonen and CPANN toolbox: new release!

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A new release of the Kohonen and CPANN toolbox (4.6) is now available. In this release, GPU and CPU calculation has been improved. The Kohonen and CPANN toolbox for MATLAB is a collection of MATLAB modules for training Kohonen Maps (Self Organising Maps, SOMs), Counterpropagation Artificial Neural networs (CPANNs), Supervised Kohonen networks (SKN), XY-fused networks (XY-F). It can be downloaded here: https://michem.unimib.it/download/matlab-toolboxes/kohonen-and-cpann-toolbox-for-matlab/