Spotlight: ACTSI-supported Reasearch, Dr. Tianwei Yu and Dr. Dean Jones
How to automate the most widely used fingerprinting technique used in metabolicsresearch?
Research Focus: Software for liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC/MS) data
Tianwei Yu, PhD
Assistant Professor, Biostatistics and Bioinformatics
Rollins School of Public Health
Dean Jones, PhD
Professor, MedicineAssociate Professor, Ophthalmology
Emory School of Medicine
ACTSI Support:
•LC/MS is the most widely used fingerprinting technique in metabolomics research
• ACTSI-BERDmember and PiCoTraCS grant recipient, Dr. Tianwei Yu and colleagues (Yu et al., 2009) developed the software package apLCMSwhich through high-resolution data allows reliable feature detection and recovery of low-intensity signals
•Associated components greatly facilitate examination of LC/MS spectra, which was previously done manually
• The software package now serves as the standard LC/MS data processing pipeline in the clinical biomarkers lab at Emory headed by Dr. Dean Jones
• Dr. Jones supports multiple ACTSI projects and Dr. Yu’s research in developing the software was funded under a joint ACTSI PiCoTraCS/ Emory University Research Committee (URC) pilot grant (Developing Bioinformatics Tools for Large Scale LC-MS Data) and under multiple program project grants awarded to the Jones lab in addition to ACTSI core funding
• This represents an excellent example of the leveraging of resources necessary to conceptualize and complete statistical developments with significant potential for positive impact on clinical and translational research