ATHABASCA — What do metabolites have to do both with knowing if you’re healthy and how good blueberries taste?
That’s a question University of Alberta (U of A) PhD student Kieran Tarazona Carrillo will be answering in an upcoming presentation on the role of scientists in society and the impacts of metabolomics research May 2 on Zoom in the final presentation for Science Outreach – Athabasca until the fall.
“I’ll mainly be talking about what scientists have contributed to society, a little bit of the history of scientific discovery and then I will talk a bit about metabolomics,” Carrillo said in an April 20 interview. “That's what I study and that's the study of small molecules.”
Much like genomics is the study of the genome, metabolomics research focuses on metabolic end products.
“In the Harynuk group at the U of A, where I am completing my PhD, metabolomics samples are analyzed using comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography (GC×GC), a powerful separation technique,” Carrillo said. “I will introduce this technique in simple terms and present some results obtained using this powerful tool.”
Using the example of glucose, your body breaks it down to the smallest particles of simple sugars.
“With this we can see we have a profile or an overall picture of what is being produced in your body,” they said.
More information on the May 2 presentation, as well as the Zoom link, can be found at http://scienceoutreach.ab.ca/events/upcoming/.
