About Metabolomics
Metabolomics is a very fast expanding research field for phenotyping of biological samples with an unbiased approach of characterisation. Especially, either not much pronounced (silent) phenotypes or subsidiary phenotypes could be determined if many different parameters are correlated. At present, two main approaches in metabolomics are performed: targeted (quantification of a chosen set of metabolites) and non targeted (profiling or search for biomarkers). Metabolomics analyses large sets of metabolites in a sample and provides integrated overview on biological events. Metabolomics requests sensitive and fast analytical methods and bioinformatic processiong of data.
Eine kurze Darstellung der Metabolomik auf Deutsch ist hier erhältlich.
Eine kurze Darstellung der Metabolomic im Interview: Podcast Metabolomic
Part of our activities is related to targeted metabolomics. We successfully performed studies in the population based human KORA (Cooperative Health Research in the Region of Augsburg) cohort and in animal models in elucidating metabolomic effects in complex diseases or drug development, respectively.
To facilitate high quality standards and sample tracking we build up a tailor made LIMS. The non-targeted approaches are followed in a lower throughput using two-dimensional chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry and flow injection ultrahigh resolution mass spectrometry with various ionization modes. We recently established the MassTRIX web-service (http://masstrix.org) annotating metabolite elemental compositions from ultrahigh resolution mass spectrometry data in their genomic context on KEGG pathway maps. Processing of data from targeted metabolomics can be done at our automated server (http://metabolomics.helmholtz-muenchen.de/metap2/).
Recent developments include support for Helmholtz Zentrum München-based research in the large scale analyses for diabetes (KORA-Study, Prof. H-E Wichmann, EPI), animal model phenotyping (Prof. M. Hrabé de Angelis, IEG/GMC) and animal product quality improvement (FUGATO, Qualipid, Prof. W. Mewes, IBI; Prof. K. Suhre, IBIS).
