OUR LAB
Carla António | Head of Lab
Plant Metabolomics is a powerful tool for understanding how plants adapt to environmental stressors by analyzing their metabolic profiles. Integrating metabolomics with other "omics" data (like genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics) helps pinpoint the biochemical changes associated with stress tolerance and identify potential biomarkers for crop improvement.
We offer analytical support for metabolomics projects — from sample preparation and metabolite extraction to data acquisition and analysis — using the gold standard platform GC-TOF-MS for analyzing primary metabolites (e.g.; amino acids, sugars, TCA cycle-intermediates, organic acids, polyamines). We emphasize the importance of a robust experimental design with established standard operating procedures to ensure high-quality and reliable data interpretation. We provide in-depth primary metabolite identification and statistical analysis, including descriptive, univariate, multivariate, and graphical visualizations of the data.
Our core mission is to integrate GC-TOF-MS primary metabolite profiling with biological studies across diverse scientific fields. Our current focus is scaling our plant metabolomics workflows to tackle critical challenges in both environmental and clinical sectors. This ranges from driving sustainable aquaculture and marine ecosystem research to mapping the metabolic reprogramming behind cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. The ultimate goal is to gain a comprehensive understanding of how complex living systems function and interact in various environments.
Keywords: sample preparation, metabolite extraction, GC-TOF-MS, primary metabolites, statistical & data analysis, plant metabolism, fish nutrition, sustainable aquaculture, marine ecosystems, climate change, precision medicine.
