Friday, April 12, 2024

A call for accessible tools to unlock single-cell immunometabolism research!

Are you interested in the fact that it's way way easier to see metabolites in single cells than to quantify proteins? Then you should check out this great -and short - new commentary! 


One thing I learned in my short terms running Metabolomics services is that almost no one cares about all of the things that we can see in an untargeted run. When someone wants "Metabolomics" they almost always have one pathway that they actually want. They really want glycolysis or they really want this one set of molecules that are a side effect of the electron transport chain, etc., While running global is by far the easiest, you are always stochastically sampling those convenient metabolites for MS/MS and so the ones they're interested in are often not the ones where you have your highest confidence identifications. 

What is really really super helpful to know up front is - what do most people actually want? That way you can build a panel or panel list that someone can walk up and pick off of a menu. I bet people who are good at Metabolomics with years of experience have those. 

This group is very clear on what they consider would be the highest priorities for single cell metabolomics!

Some of these are easier than others - I like succinate (we use a heavy in our dilution buffers as one of our internal controls) and I'm cool with CoA metabolism. Nice big molecules that many retain without miserable chromatography). Others are harder, but you'll never find a nicer list of priorities for a rapidly emerging field.  100% recommended!  

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