The journey from metabolites to mechanisms
Event details
Date | 03.04.2017 |
Hour | 13:30 › 14:30 |
Speaker | Nicola ZAMBONI Institute of Molecular Systems Biology, ETH Zürich, Switzerland |
Location | |
Category | Conferences - Seminars |
SEMINAR SERIES : Trends in Physiology and Metabolism (Bio-682)
Abstract:
Metabolism plays a pivotal role in all cellular processes by providing building blocks and energy for biosynthesis and participating in decision-making. In many biomedical areas such as oncology, toxicology, immunology, stem cell research, etc., metabolism is currently regarded as a key driver and a differentiating factor to be exploited in diagnostics and selective therapy. Historically, the discovery of aberrant metabolism has been mainly accomplished at the genetic level, e.g. by identifying peculiar enzyme mutations in primary material, by finding upregulation of atypical (embryonic) isoforms at expression level, or screening for sensitivity to RNAi in cell lines or mice. Albeit highly valuable, these approaches suffer from intrinsic limitations in scope and sensitivity.
Our lab approaches metabolism bottom-up, which means from a functional perspective. Experimentally, we rely heavily on metabolomics and the analysis of metabolic fluxes by stable isotopic tracers. Both metabolite and fluxes provide an integrated view of the metabolic network in action, that emerges from the interplay of cellular components.
Over the past years, we analyzed > 3’000 experiments (>850’000 samples) in all of the aforementioned areas. Overall, it has become straightforward to profile large cohorts and discover metabolic alterations in virtually any study. This massive capacity unlocked a realm of novel opportunities. Fueled by this wealth of information, our research focus shifted from data generation to functional interpretation of the results, i.e. to the generation of testable hypotheses from high-throughput metabolomics. In my lecture, I’ll discuss the state-of-the-art in bottom-up analysis of metabolism and illustrate our current efforts to abridge data to mechanisms.
Abstract:
Metabolism plays a pivotal role in all cellular processes by providing building blocks and energy for biosynthesis and participating in decision-making. In many biomedical areas such as oncology, toxicology, immunology, stem cell research, etc., metabolism is currently regarded as a key driver and a differentiating factor to be exploited in diagnostics and selective therapy. Historically, the discovery of aberrant metabolism has been mainly accomplished at the genetic level, e.g. by identifying peculiar enzyme mutations in primary material, by finding upregulation of atypical (embryonic) isoforms at expression level, or screening for sensitivity to RNAi in cell lines or mice. Albeit highly valuable, these approaches suffer from intrinsic limitations in scope and sensitivity.
Our lab approaches metabolism bottom-up, which means from a functional perspective. Experimentally, we rely heavily on metabolomics and the analysis of metabolic fluxes by stable isotopic tracers. Both metabolite and fluxes provide an integrated view of the metabolic network in action, that emerges from the interplay of cellular components.
Over the past years, we analyzed > 3’000 experiments (>850’000 samples) in all of the aforementioned areas. Overall, it has become straightforward to profile large cohorts and discover metabolic alterations in virtually any study. This massive capacity unlocked a realm of novel opportunities. Fueled by this wealth of information, our research focus shifted from data generation to functional interpretation of the results, i.e. to the generation of testable hypotheses from high-throughput metabolomics. In my lecture, I’ll discuss the state-of-the-art in bottom-up analysis of metabolism and illustrate our current efforts to abridge data to mechanisms.
Links
Practical information
- Informed public
- Free
Organizer
- Prof. Lluis Fajas (UNIL), Prof. Kei Sakamoto (NIHS) and Prof. Kristina Schoonjans (EPFL)
Contact
- Prof. Kristina Schoonjans (EPFL) - [email protected]