ABSTRACT: Truly rational design has been a major goal of bioengineering for some time. And while certain aspects of genetic engineering have become more predictable, the need for information about cellular behaviour has only continued to grow. The availability of genomic, transcriptomic, and metabolomic data has opened the door to the synthesis of multiple levels of information in biological research. As a consequence, there has been a push to analyze biological systems in a comprehensive manner through the integration of their interactions into mathematical models, with the process frequently referred to as “systems biology”. Despite the potential for this approach to greatly improve our knowledge of biological systems, the definition of mathematical relationships between different levels of information opens the door to diverse sources of error, requiring precise, unbiased quantification as well as robust validation methods. Failure to account for differences in uncertainty across multiple levels of data analysis may cause errors to drown out any useful outcomes of the synthesis.
This seminar focuses on the development of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) as a metabolomic platform for cell culture analysis. Despite overall promise, careful investigation of the current quantification methods has revealed severe constraints on the statistical precision and accuracy of the results. The seminar will discuss statistical methodology used to identify these issues as well as mathematical techniques that can be used to alleviate them. The seminar will also consider the application of metabolomic data to modelling through a technique called Metabolic Flux Analysis and show that commonly used methods of model validation may overlook errors that can render results entirely meaningless. Careful consideration of these issues will be integral to the continued development of ‘omic technologies.
Bio Sketch:
Stanislav’s research career began during his undergraduate education. He quickly developed an interest in data processing and analysis, authoring (or co-authoring) a number of papers on method development by the time he finished his BASc. degree in Chemical Engineering in 2012. Following one year as a Master’s student, he switched into a PhD program in Chemical Engineering at the University of Waterloo. His graduate work has revolved around the metabolic analysis of cell culture, with a special focus on the development of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) as a platform for metabolomics. His research work has been supported by the Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarship as well as a number of other awards that include the Iron Ring Scholarship and the Murray Moo-Young Biotechnology Scholarship. He is currently interested in the continued development of metabolomic technology and cell culture monitoring more generally, with the end goal of fully online, real-time detection.