An Unbiased Look at the Effects of Oxidative Stress on the Body Using the Thermo Scientific LTQ FT™ and Genedata's Expressionist® Software

Introduction

Dr. Dean Jones, of Emory University, experimented with an unbiased look at the effects of oxidative stress on the body. Jones used a Thermo Scientific LTQ FT mass spectrometer to perform high-throughput analysis on human plasma samples, running ~150 samples a day. Next, Jones used a new version of Genedata's Expressionist software, designed for finding biomarkers in metabolomic studies, and analyzed 374 billion data points in just half an hour and determined over 2,000 statistically relevant metabolic features.

Building a Metabolomics Database

Dr. Jones conducted a large, rigorous metabolomics study, comprising 10 human participants, each of whom provided 34 plasma samples over a 12-day period. Each participant was given a sulfur-depleted diet to change their thiol/disulfide pools in the hope of better understanding what metabolite changes occur during oxidative stress. Normally, these thiol/disulfide pools help to eliminate non-radical oxidants. By changing these pools, Jones hoped to better understand the metabolite changes that take place during the depletion and repletion of sulfur in the diet.

"Developing these nutritional challenge protocols to evaluate how individual metabolisms respond to metabolic changes is the first step in building a comprehensive metabolomics database" said Jones.

> See additional metabolomics resources at www.thermo.com/metabolomics

 

 

"We're working toward a way to push health in a new direction, so it's not just about trying to avoid disease, but to optimize health."

Dr. Dean P. Jones, Department of Medicine, Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA