Training

The goal of metabolomics is to identify and quantify the complete biochemical composition of a biological sample. With the increase in genomic, transcriptomic and proteomic information there is a growing need to understand the metabolic phenotype that these these genes and proteins ultimately control. The aim of this course is to provide an overview of the applications, laboratory equipment and online bioinformatic portals for metabolomics research.

During the course we will introduce the common laboratory equipment in order to extract metabolites and analyse samples to collect metabolomic data (such as HPLC, GC and MS), how to analyse the data and identify the metabolites using online databases and how to map the metabolomic data in relation to metabolic pathways and the genes and proteins that are associated with those metabolic pathways. The course content will predominantly be based on analysing samples from model plant species such as Arabidopsis thaliana but the procedures are transferable to all other organisms.