Award details

A Two Day Work Shop on E-science mathematics and metabolomics.

Reference	BB/D006422/1
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Professor Julian Griffin
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors
Institution	University of Cambridge
Department	Biochemistry
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	2,990
Status	Completed
Type	Research Grant
Start date	12/12/2005
End date	11/06/2006
Duration	6 months

Abstract

While the UK has been at the forefront of the development of metabolomics, including producing many of the key papers and reviews in this area, many of the meetings in this subject are predominantly held in the USA, particularly for applications in the pharmaceutical world, mammalian biology and toxicology. While there is now an International Society for Metabolomics the first International meeting of this society is in Japan (2005) followed by the second meeting in Boston, USA (2006). To in part address this imbalance we intend to organise a workshop in Cambridge to address some of the key issues in metabolomics, particularly concerning bioinformatics and mathematics. This meeting will also be carried out in conjunction with the Metabolic Profiling Discussion Group, a consortium of pharmaceutical companies with an interest in metabolomics for drug safety assessment and research and development. This includes GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca, Unilever, Novo Nordisk and Novartis. In addition the meeting will provide another opportunity for the 'Standards for the study of Metabolism Group,' a collaboration between several academic groups including the Universities of Cambridge, Birmingham, Manchester, and Aberystwyth, Imperial College London, and the EBI, to discuss issues concerning the data basing and description of metabolomic/metabonomic experiments. Specifically the workshop will address three key mathematical/bioinformatics challenges for metabolomics: 1. Data processing of large multivariate metabolite data sets. 2. Mathematical processes for the cross correlation of different analytical platforms to increase the coverage of the metabolome in a given experiment. 3. The need for databases and standardised descriptions of metabolomic data sets to allow the rapid dissemination of data between research groups. This workshop will be of benefit to both academic and industrial scientists in the field of metabolomics across a range of disciplines including functionalgenomics, toxicology, plant sciences, microbial metabolism and pathology.

Summary

This proposal is for part funding of a workshop in the area of mathematical challenges to metabolomics. Metabolomics is the global description of all the metabolites present in a cell, tissue, organ or organism. This area is currently being used in a wide range of biological problems including understanding crop growth in plants, disease virulence in microbes, drug action in humans, and gene function in animals. Because of the very large amount of data produced mathematical approaches are needed to simplify the data obtained. We are organising this two day workshop to discuss some of the problems associated with data collection and processing. This workshop will also provide one of the first opportunities for UK scientists in this area to meet.

Committee	Closed Committee - Engineering & Biological Systems (EBS)
Research Topics	X – not assigned to a current Research Topic
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	EDF (e-science Development Fund) (EDF) [2003-2005]
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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