Hello everybody!
My PhD project revolves around the usage of metabolic phenotyping in epidemiological studies and the MWAS (Metabolome Wide Association Study). Basically, the metabolic phenotyping of urine biofluid samples from participants in epidemiologic studies makes it possible to look for associations between metabolites, nutrition and the health status of individuals and populations. We then have huge ammounts of very rich and complex data to explore and a lot of detective work to do. Handling all this is an Herculean task that cannot be accomplished without automation and computational tools. I’m developing some of these tools and applying them on data from epidemiolgical studies on blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. All this is very close to my crude notion of “bioinformatician heaven”, and its no wonder that I’m loving my project!
One of the coolest things about doing a PhD in the Section of Computational and Systems Medicine (CSM) is that you get to use (and, VERY importantly, learn how to) very exquisite pieces of scientific machinery – both
NMR and all sorts of
MS flavours. They are really useful and allow us to do a lot of interesting science… but, “serious business” aside, they are awesome! In a very undetailed, unscientific manner – NMR has magnets and quantum physics, and analyzes a sample without even touching it, and MS is like an ion weighing scale at the end of small particle acelerator – How can we not love our work? Working with these make my “inner physicist” rejoice and was among the reasons why I decided to study metabonomics. Besides, with the preparations for the
Phenome Centre we have many new and “shiny toys” coming in and it has been quite interesting to see them being setup and installed and all the associated engineering work. The CSM is definitely a good place to be now, especially if you love computational data analysis, fancy gagdets and infernal machines!
Until next time,
Gonçalo
PS: I appologize for the lack of pictures, but I’ve took a small break and I’m writing from my home back in Portugal! I’ll add some when I get back!