Notice Board

The Dept of Chemistry & Biochemistry Presents

Dr. Ryan McKay

NMR Laboratory Supervisor
University of Alberta

Understanding the quantitation  and variability of NMR metabolomics data

Thursday, October 13, 2016
12:15—1:30 pm
C610
University Hall

All are welcome to attend

The attempt to understand health through the complete assessment of metabolic content in an “…organism, cell or tissue”[1] (Metabolomics) has rapidly expanded over the past 10-15 years.  Initial exploratory studies covered many hyphenated techniques (e.g. LC-MS, MS-MS, LC-NMR, etc.), though metabolomics now commonly involves just NMR, MS, or occasionally both.

 The potential of metabolomics evolved into the promise of personalized and optimized medicine along with early detection of everything from infection to cancer.  This promise has met with varied (and arguable) success.  While there was, and continues to be, an enormous rush from: equipment vendors, health researchers, and groups focused on translation (i.e. products) to quickly utilize this emerging technique, the end result may not be what we expected.

 Emphasis is now shifting back to understanding which metabolites, techniques, or results may be statistically significant.  Questions about the accuracy and precision of sample preparation, subsequent sample handling, instrument setup, exact method of data acquisition, types of processing, analysis, and resulting conclusions are now starting to emerge.  Researchers may be facing re-evaluation of previous data and the possibility that conclusions may need to reconsidered.

 This presentation will focus on the practical experience gained over thousands of samples, from sources as varied as human urine, serum, plasma, and direct tissue homogenates from plants and animals.  While the metabolomics NMR experiments appear to be some of the simplest to run, the quantum mechanical subtleties and equipment requirements quickly make metabolomics based acquisitions some of the most challenging and difficult to reliably reproduce.

References:

Emwas, A. H., Roy, R., McKay, R. T., Ryan, D., Brennan, L., Tenori, L., Luchinat, C., Gao, X., Zeri, A. C., Gowda, G. A., Raftery, D., Steinbeck, C., Salek, R. M. & Wishart, D. S. (2016) Recommendations and Standardization of Biomarker Quantification Using NMR-Based Metabolomics with Particular Focus on Urinary Analysis. J Proteome Res 15, 360-373

Stringer, K. A., McKay, R. T., Karnovsky, A., Quémerais, B. & Lacy, P. (2016) Metabolomics and Its Application to Acute Lung Diseases. Front Immunol 7, 44

Lacy, P., McKay, R. T., Finkel, M., Karnovsky, A., Woehler, S., Lewis, M. J., Chang, D. & Stringer, K. A. (2014) Signal intensities derived from different NMR probes and parameters contribute to variations in quantification of metabolites. PLoS One 9, e85732

Sokolenko, S., McKay, R., Blondeel, E. J. M., Lewis, M. J., Chang, D., George, B. & Aucoin, M. G. (2013) Understanding the variability of compound quantification from targeted profiling metabolomics of 1D-1H-NMR spectra in synthetic mixtures and urine with additional insights on choice of pulse sequences and robotic sampling Metabolomics 9, 887-903

Ryan T. McKay (ryan.mckay@ualberta.ca) Ph.D UofA, B.Sc. UofL ‘93

Scientific Director National High Field NMR Centre (2001-2012)

Presently NMR Facility Supervisor, Department of Chemistry, University of Alberta

[1] Paraphrased Web definition