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Hi, my name is Gwénaëlle Le Gall.
I lead the Metabolite Unit at the Institute of Food Research in Norwich.
The institute will change its name on April 28, 2017
and will be called the Quadram Institute.
The new center will focus on researching and developing solutions to
worldwide challenges in human health, food, and disease.
My role in the unit is to provide expertise and perform
metabolomic analysis on mammalian fluids and tissue,
cell culture, food, and plant extract.
My aim with this talk is to give an overview on nuclear magnetic resonance,
NMR applied to metabolomics.
I hope that by the end of my presentation,
you will feel a bit more acquainted with NMR and the profiling of metabolites.
I would like to give you insights into the application of NMR and convince you
that NMR is a fantastic tool to study central metabolism.
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I will introduce you to the concept of metabolomics,
describe how to prepare a sample,
provide a description of the principle of NMR, and how to use the technique.
In my opinion, one of the challenges, possibly the biggest,
is to identify the chemical compounds or
metabolites that give rise to the signals detected.
Identifying new metabolites can be a long iterative and often tedious process,
that does not necessarily yield a result.
Some of the unknown compounds remain unknown for years,
until you or someone
assigns the signals and reports them in the literature.
Conversely, with the increasing number of
papers published and the constant refinement of the databases,
identification can sometimes be quicker and straightforward.
Although not easy at first,
assigning signals to metabolites becomes easier with practice.
And some compounds are detected in most samples,
amino or organic acids for example.
With experience, it makes the task more routine.
I will describe the approaches used to identify metabolites in
NMR spectra and finish with an example of a real situation.
