Overview
The Metabolic Phenotyping Core centralizes existing metabolism-related resources, services, and training at OMRF to support the junior investigators in this Cellular Metabolism Research program.
The Core provides support to our current Project Leaders in three areas:
- Measurement of cellular respiration and mitochondrial function
- Isotopic metabolite tracer analyses
- Mass spectrometry metabolic profiling and bioinformatic analyses
Overall, the Core enables our COBRE investigators to conduct comprehensive functional analyses of cellular metabolism to keep them on the leading edge of their respective fields. In the long run, the Core will help expand metabolism research capabilities throughout Oklahoma.
Staff and Expertise
Dr. Kenneth Humphries serves as the Director of the COBRE Metabolic Phenotyping Core, providing administrative and scientific oversight of this Core. He is an associate member in the Aging & Metabolism Research Program at OMRF and an adjunct associate professor in the department of physiology and the department of biochemistry and molecular biology at OUHSC. Dr. Humphries has long-standing interests and expertise in mitochondrial and free radical biology. He has analyzed mitochondrial function and ROS production in numerous tissue types and experimental models and has collaborated with multiple labs at OMRF and OUHSC over the past decade.
Dr. Timothy Griffin is an Associate Member in the Aging & Metabolism Research Program, a research biologist at the Oklahoma City VA Medical Center, and an adjunct associate professor in the department of physiology and the department of biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. Dr. Griffin has over 20 years of relevant experience and special expertise in comparative metabolic physiology, obese mouse pathophysiology, and immunometabolism osteoarthritis research. He has led the development of mouse metabolic phenotyping services at OMRF. He advises junior investigators of this COBRE in the proper design, implementation, and interpretation of metabolism experiments.
Dr. Benjamin Miller is a Full Member in the Aging & Metabolism Research Program at OMRF and an adjunct professor in the department of physiology and the department of biochemistry and molecular biology at OUHSC. He serves in leadership positions of various cores and centers. He has used stable isotopes to study metabolic turnover and flux and developed an independent training program of isotope research. Through collaboration with his peers, he has built connections with experts in isotope studies in the United States as well as in Europe.
Dr. Holly Van Remmen is chair of the Aging & Metabolism Research Program at OMRF, senior research career scientist at the Oklahoma City VA Medical Center, and adjunct professor of physiology at OUHSC. Dr. Van Remmen has more than 20 years of expertise in redox biology and metabolic research. She is the co-director of the Oklahoma Nathan Shock Center and leader of the Integrative Redox Biology Core in that Center, which provides measures of redox status, oxidative damage, free radical production, and mitochondrial function. These resources complement those provided in the COBRE Metabolic Phenotyping Core. Dr. Van Remmen is an international leader in this field, serving as the president-elect for the Society for Redox Biology in Medicine.
Dr. Albert Batushansky is an assistant staff scientist with more than a decade of research experience and specialized expertise in metabolomic analyses. He directs GC-MS metabolic profiling studies in the Aging & Metabolism Research Program and oversees the maintenance, operation, analysis, and reporting of GC-MS results. He serves as the project coordinator to assist this CORBE.
Dr. Satoshi Matsuzaki is an associate staff scientist with 16 years of research experience in mitochondrial biochemistry and molecular biology. He is an expert in mitochondrial enzymology and Seahorse XF metabolic analysis. He provides service and training for cell respiration and mitochondria functional analyses.
Dr. Jie Zhu is an assistant staff scientist. She has developed expertise in conducting radiolabeled metabolic substrate flux analyses. She has finished the Agilent 1290 Infinity II-6546 UHPLC-qTOF instrument training courses and assists in sample preparation and analysis of stable-isotopic 13C-MFA LC-MS/MS experiments with Drs. Miller and Batushansky.
Equipment
All equipment in this core is centralized in the Aging & Metabolism Research Program and includes:
- Agilent Seahorse XFe24 and XFe96 Extracellular Flux Analyzers;
- Oroboros O2k high-resolution respirometry;
- Agilent 1290 Infinity II-6546 UHPLC-qTOF;
- Agilent 5977A GC-MS system;
- Agilent 7010B Triple Quadrupole GC/MS system;
- BioSpherix hypoxia system;
- Thermo-F Sorvall Ultracentrifuge WX+80;
- Los Gatos Research LWIA-912 enhanced performance liquid water isotope analyzer;
- Tier 2 Gray Data Center (TIA-942 standard) with private “cloud” cluster support for 11TB RAM, >1200 CPU cores, and 29TB local scratch storage for bioinformatic computation.
