Center for Metabolomic Studies Seminar Series Featuring Corey Broeckling, PhD
Presentation: “The Core Metabolome: Developing Metabolomics for the Masses”
Speaker: Corey Broeckling, PhD
Bioanalysis and Omics Center, Analytical Resources Core
Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO
Abstract:
Untargeted metabolomics aspires to comprehensively measure all small molecules in any given sample. Achieving this aspirational goal is especially challenging for metabolomics, as compared to other ‘omic’ approaches, due to the heterogeneity in both the source of small molecules in biological samples and in chemical structure and properties. Analytical and informatics approaches to these challenges must therefore embrace these sources of small molecule heterogeneity. This seminar will review the chemical diversity of the human metabolome, the analytical challenges associated with capturing this diversity, and the constraints imposed by metabolomics informatics approaches that fail to acknowledge these challenges. Analytical and informatics solutions to these challenges exist, and this seminar will highlight the utility of these approaches in biomedical case studies, including applications to environmental exposure, nutritional chemistry, and large-scale disease biomarker studies.
About the Speaker:
Dr. Corey Broeckling is a trained biologist, with a B.S in Environmental Science from Quincy University, an M.S. in Entomology from Virginia Tech, and a PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology from Colorado State University. He started in metabolomics prior to his PhD, when he worked for three years with Dr. Lloyd Sumner in plant metabolomics. Following his PhD, he became associate director of the Colorado State University Proteomics and Metabolomics, an organization he directs in its new structure as the Bioanalysis and Omics Center of the Analytical Resources Core (ARC-BIO). His research centers at the intersection of informatics, analytical chemistry, and biology, with a focus on developing solutions which are objective, broadly adaptable, and valuable for deriving knowledge from data.