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 | | Development of a Focused Metabolite Profiling Capability for Dissecting Cellular and Molecular Processes of Living Organisms in Space Environments | | |
Regulatory control in biological systems is exerted at virtually all levels of the "Central Dogma" of biology:
DNA->mRNA->Enzyme(inactive)->Enzyme(active)->Metabolite(s). Therefore, stand-alone transcriptome studies fall short of providing a
complete picture of how gene expression translates into metabolic consequences. Metabolites are the end products of all cellular regulatory processes and reflect the ultimate
outcome of potential changes suggested by genomics and proteomics due to an environmental stimulus or genetic modification. Thus, it is not surprising
that metabolite profiling is an emerging tool in the "omics" revolution of biology and life sciences research. This approach complements genomics and
proteomics by the comprehensive study of all the metabolites (metabolome) in a biological system, and holds great promises for discovering functions of
genes and stress biomarkers, predicting novel metabolic pathways, channeling metabolic fluxes into valuable biochemical pathways via metabolic
engineering. This promising approach is hampered by the lack of appropriate methodologies for unbiased extraction of metabolites and subsequent
quantification, and difficulties in systematical and high-throughput identification of unknown metabolites and automatic deduction of three dimensional
data files. Sophisticated instruments and techniques, as well as advanced skills are required to enable "deep" metabolite profiling and the coupling
with transcriptome profiling. Thus, the primary objective of the project is to establish the metabolite profiling capability that encompasses unbiased
metabolite extraction and derivatization of a major subset of the metabolome, followed by GC/MS and/or LC/MS analysis; an automated data reduction and
deconcolution method; technical competency in rapid structure elucidation or identification of unknown metabolites.
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