Seminar

Single-cell metabolomics: One Man´s noise is another Man´s signal

Alfredo J. Ibáñez, PhD

Metabolomic measurements, using mass spectrometry, have been used to provide great amount of information about the biochemical state of a cell. Yet, the clear identification of phenotypic traits using mass spectrometry is still quite challenging. This challenge is associated with the "rule-of-thumb" assumption that all cells in a population present the same response toward a stress cue. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Recent discoveries - using single-cell level analytical techniques - suggest that cells (even cells from an isogenic population) can display multiple metabolic phenotypes at the same time (Figure 1). In other words, some cells within the clonal population can present responses that are significantly different to those of the whole population. During this seminar, Dr. Ibañez will introduce his research, which is based on a recently patented method by the Zenobi group at ETH Zurich, i.e., microarrays for mass spectrometry (Urban, Zenobi et al. US2013/0146758; Ibanez et al. PNAS 2013). During his presentation, he will expand three key aspects he has focused in the past years: (i) better technology for single-cell level analysis, (ii) improving the data-processing (Bioanalytics), and (iii) case-studies, where single-cell level mass spectrometry analysis can play an important role.