Seminar

Title: Understanding physiology through metabolic flux quantitation

Speaker: Tiago Alves

Affiliation: Universitätsklinikum Carl Gustav Carus

Abstracts: In recent years, metabolism has been the focus of intense research. The ability to determine the magnitude and regulation of individual reactions holds a tantalizing hope for clarifying our understanding of disease progression and the exploration of new therapeutic approaches. Much of this interest is supported by the broad metabolic characterization gained by combining mass spectrometry with stable isotope analysis. Yet, the complexity of the metabolic pathways, with multiple nodes where metabolites intersect, scramble and diverge often complicates isotope labeling and interferes with the accuracy of flux estimation. Dr. Alves developed a MS-based approach (MIMOSA - Mass Isotopomer Multi-Ordinate Spectral Analysis) to decipher the step-wise position-specific transfer of 13C into subsequent metabolites through major pathways. This development was crucial to increasing the resolution of metabolic analysis in terms of magnitude, direction and discrimination between competing reactions. Is this seminar, he will discuss the principles necessary for high-resolution flux analysis and their impact in our understanding of cellular physiology.

Short Bio: Dr. Alves graduated in 2005 in Biochemistry from the University of Lisbon. He went on to study the principles of metabolism quantitation and regulation in a collaboration between the University of Coimbra and Yale University, earning him a PhD in Biochemistry and Biophysics (2010). His experience in this field was further nurtured in his post-doctoral studies at Yale University and he is now a group leader at the Universitätsklinikum Carl Gustav Carus in Dresden (Germany).