The "Metabolomics" cluster is composed of trained organic and analytical chemists that employ cutting-edge analytical instruments largely based on mass spectrometry for metabolomics analysis.
The metabolomics infrastructure in the lab also includes lipidomics analysis in which hundreds of diverse lipid species could be monitored in a single cell type or tissue. Recently, we have incorporated a new technology termed Metabolite Imaging (MSI) to our analytical toolbox that allows high-resolution spatial analysis of metabolites.
The entire metabolomics pipeline developed throughout the years in the lab is continuously improved by new computational tools.
A major effort is currently devoted for increasing the capacity for metabolite identification which is a key issue in today’s metabolomics assays. To this end, we have constructed a unique mass spectral library of nearly 5000 diverse plant specialized metabolites using reference compounds purified from nearly 2000 different plant species.