Xiuxia Du, an associate professor of bioinformatics in the College of Computing and Informatics (CCI), was awarded a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Cooperative Agreement Award as the principal investigator on a project to develop metabolomics data analysis and interpretation tools.
Metabolomics is the comprehensive study and analysis of small molecules, commonly known as metabolites, within cells, biofluids, tissues or the entire organism. It is estimated that humans have thousands of metabolites, which keep people healthy and serve as important indicators of diseases. The function of many of these metabolites are currently unknown. A better understanding of them could lead to preventative measures people could take to stay healthy or enable the early diagnosis of diseases.
Mass spectrometers coupled with chromatography are the primary analytical instruments that scientists use to detect metabolites in metabolomics studies.
Du’s research is in the development of algorithms and software tools for accurately extracting metabolite information from mass spectrometry-based metabolomics data. It is a critical piece of solving one of the grand challenges of modern science: how genotype (DNA) controls phenotype. Roughly speaking, DNA is used to produce RNA, which gives instructions to generate proteins, which control metabolism. Currently, there are cheap, accurate and relatively easy ways to characterize DNA, RNA and proteins, but interpreting the mass spectra of metabolites is a vexing problem.
“As a result of this funding, researchers will have a more accurate and robust software tool to detect chemicals in their biological samples,” said Du.
The significance of this on a global scale is difficult to predict, but in devoting more than $1.35 million in a single grant to the cause, the NIH believes it will be substantial. The resulting software tools will allow biologists and chemists to better detect good and bad chemicals in biological samples (blood, urine, tissue, etc.) and address questions in the study of these biological samples: What chemicals are in there and how do impact a person’s health?
Du’s software tool is intended to process data from a wide range of analytical instruments.
“I will collaborate with three researchers: Dr. Susan Sumner at UNC Chapel Hill, Dr. Stephen Barnes from University of Alabama at Birmingham and Dr. Corey Broeckling at Colorado State University,” Du stated. “Each of these collaborators directs a metabolomics core facility at his/her institution and will test the software that my group develops. This collaboration makes extensive testing of the software tool possible.”
Du completed a Ph.D. in Systems Science and Mathematics from Washington University in St. Louis.