Putting Biochemistry in Context - Dr. Adam Rosebrock

Dr. Adam Rosebrock
Stony Brook School of Medicine and the Stony Brook University Cancer Center
Department of Pathology

Abstract:

Metabolism is a dynamic, regulated process that changes across
space and time as cells grow, divide, and face diverse
environmental conditions. Static maps of biochemical reactions
adorning textbooks and wall-charts are insufficient to explain and
predict cellular and organismal state. My group is working toward
understanding state-specific metabolic biochemistry by combining
mass spectrometry metabolomics with genetics and genomics. I
actively develop, use, and train others to use a range of techniques
to directly measure intracellular metabolites and metabolic
reaction flux.

I will discuss how my lab is re-writing metabolic maps by
discovering new enzymes and determining regulation of metabolic
activities across cell states. I will describe how we are combing
reverse genetics with metabolomics to place newly characterized
enzymes in context. Technology development is a large part of my
lab; I will discuss some of the analytical and data science tools we
have developed to overcome the challenges posed by the chemical
diversity of metabolism and to enable large-scale analysis of mass
spectrometry metabolomics data.