Metabolomics and Lipidomics are emerging fields in systems biology that are complementary to the other -omics sciences. By integrating metabolomic and lipidomic approaches, health status can be assessed by surveying a complete, unbiased biochemical profile (metabolites and lipids) in biofluids (urine, plasma/serum), tissues and cells, providing a direct measurement of an organism’s phenotype. At the Hollings Marine Laboratory (HML) in Charleston, SC, we employ metabolomics (and plan to incorporate lipidomics) as a useful technique to assess health in the marine environment. In marine non-model organisms, where little biochemical, genomic, or proteomic data exists, metabolomics permits chemical characterization of the biochemical processes of the organism at a given time and enables a characterization of the range of health parameters one would expect in changing environments. By probing the health status of a myriad of species, we believe that metabolomics/lipidomic studies may aid in describing organismal health norms, extrapolating to reveal ecosystem health condition and serve as an environmental monitoring tool. Furthermore, environmental concerns, such as persistent contaminant exposure, impacting human health are of interest. While addressing important questions in environmental health, current research interests focus on interdisciplinary approaches to address the current barriers and bottlenecks in these fields including (1) advanced statistical, bioinformatic, and chemometric analyses of large-scale data; (2) chemical annotation and/or elucidation of metabolites using spectroscopic techniques (NMR and mass spectrometry) for establishing/contributing to a metabolite database; and (3) enhanced functional biochemical pathway analysis.

Analytical instrumentation includes Bruker 700 MHz and 800 MHz spectrometers equipped with cryoprobes, and various mass spectrometers including GC/MS and LC/MS.

 

key words

Environmental/human health; Chemistry; NMR; Multivariate statistics; Metabolomics; Mass spectrometry; Lipidomics; Chemometrics; Metabolic pathways;

Citizenship:  Open to U.S. citizens

Level:  Open to Postdoctoral applicants