Bits & Bites #9: Fundamentals of Gas Chromatography- MS in Metabolomics

This 10-part short course series will feature in-depth topics in untargeted metabolomics such as Bayesian statistics, a deeper look into MS-DIAL, fundamental courses in mass spectrometry, lipidomics, and so many others. Each short course can be taken individually or you can select multiple Bites. Participants will gain a deeper insight into current software, methods, and pitfalls. Each session starts promptly at 9 a.m. (Pacific Time) and will take approx. 4 hours. The courses will be conducted in a highly interactive manner, with the use of freely available software and databases. The tuition is $150 USD per Bite.

This 9th course is taught by Dr. Oliver Fiehn and Dr. Uri Keshet, both of UC Davis, with MS-DIAL for Windows and BinVestigate as required software. While LC-MS is all the hype in today’s portfolio of metabolomics assays, ranges of small molecules are difficult to impossible to screen in this manner. Volatile compounds in breath, urine, or plant analyses can best be analyzed by GC-MS. Additionally, swaths of primary metabolic intermediates ranging from glycolysis and pentose phosphates to TCA compounds, sugars, and small microbial metabolites are readily and cost-efficiently analyzed by GC-MS. In this short course, we discuss fundamentals of GC-MS, tips for best practice, aspects of instrumentation, and demonstrate data processing and use of databases. Participants will also learn the current challenges, trends, and developments of GC-MS-based metabolomics.