Project description
A unique approach to improving biomarker fingerprinting
Tracking biomarker origin is increasingly important in many different fields, such as life, environmental, food and forensic sciences. Combining metabolomics and fluxomics with isotopic fingerprinting shows great potential towards achieving this aim. Isotopic analysis by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) allows scientists to quantify with great precision the differences of isotopic contents on each site of a molecule. The EU-funded SUMMIT project has been established to address the current limitations of 13C isotopic NMR analysis. By using two powerful NMR methods – dissolution dynamic nuclear polarisation and ultrafast 2D NMR – the project will allow scientists to simultaneously measure 13C fingerprints from multiple low-concentration biomarkers in complex biological mixtures, a difficult feat to accomplish with existing methods.