An introduction to metabolomics and its application in life-sciences

Beginners

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 genes and proteins ultimately control.

The aim of this course is to provide an overview of metabolomics and its applications in life sciences, clinical and environmental settings. Over 2 days we will introduce different techniques used to extract metabolites and analyse samples to collect metabolomic data (such as HPLC or GC-based MS and NMR), present how to analyse such data, how to identify metabolites using online databases and how to map the metabolomic data to 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, including clinical and environmental settings.

The training room is located on the first floor and there is currently no wheelchair or level access available to this level.

Please note that if you are not eligible for a University of Cambridge Raven account you will need to book or register your interest by linking here.

• This course is aimed at researchers with an interest in metabolomics and its applications
• Graduate students, Postdocs and Staff members from the University of Cambridge, Affiliated Institutions and other external Institutions or individuals
• Please be aware that these courses are only free for registered University of Cambridge students. All other participants will be charged a registration fee in some form. Registration fees and further details regarding the charging policy are available here.
• Further details regarding eligibility criteria are available here

Number of sessions: 2

Bioinformatics, Data visualisation, Data handling, Metabolomics

After this course you should be able to:

• Evaluate advantages and limitations of some analytical techniques used in metabolomics studies
• Recognize the principles behind data analysis and metabolite identification including key multivariate statistics
• Access and use a number of key online resources for metabolomics research

During this course you will learn about:

• Different metabolomics techniques for data collection
• Metabolomics data processing and analysis overview including the basics of conducting univariate and multivariate statistics
• Using pathway databases to perform metabolic pathway and network analysis
• Working with metabolomic databases and exploring chemical databases
• Overview of databases for metabolomics data

Presentations, demonstrations and practicals

• Free for registered University of Cambridge students
• £ 50/day for all University of Cambridge staff, including postdocs, temporary visitors (students and researchers) and participants from Affiliated Institutions. Please note that these charges are recovered by us at the Institutional level
• It remains the participant's responsibility to acquire prior approval from the relevant group leader, line manager or budget holder to attend the course. It is requested that people booking only do so with the agreement of the relevant party as costs will be charged back to your Lab Head or Group Supervisor.
• £ 50/day for all other academic participants from external Institutions and charitable organizations. These charges must be paid at registration
• £ 100/day for all Industry participants. These charges must be paid at registration
• Further details regarding the charging policy are available here

2

A number of times per year