This year, the annual symposium “Benelux Metabolomic Days” was held in the historic city of Ghent, which I believe is the most beautiful city in Belgium. On the 5th and 6th of September, many scientists gathered at the Zebrastraat conference center to discuss the latest trends in metabolomics research. There were numerous interesting presentations and posters. As a Core Facility Metabolomics representative, I presented our Full-scan Lipidomics pre-processing and data analysis platform. This platform analyzes Thermo Scientific Q Exactive Orbitrap MS1 data and identifies lipid clusters by their specific physicochemical retention time and mass-to-charge patterns that arise from fatty acid composition (i.e., carbon length and degree of saturation). An advanced MATLAB interface visualizes these clusters by plotting a mathematical spline regression function that aligns the retention time of the data with a retention time database.
Many other posters presented fascinating topics. For instance, a research group from France showcased an AI tool for easily accessible mass spectrometry metabolomics data mining, which attracted a huge crowd of interested colleagues. Many keynote speakers shared their intriguing results, but the talks by Michael Witting (Mining the Caenorhabditis elegans lipidome using HRMS, ion mobility, and enhanced data analysis strategies), Julijana Ivanisevic (Unleashing the Potential of Lipidomics for Population Health Research), and Eline Slagboom (Metabolomics biomarkers in human aging research: monitoring risk and response to interventions) particularly caught my attention. During the coffee breaks, I had the pleasure of talking to Eline and Julijana about various public health topics, and it was great to have lively discussions.
Of course, after discussing metabolomics all day, you also want to activate your own metabolome. So, me and my colleagues Michel van Weeghel and Maria Tretowicz, enjoyed some nice Belgian beers at different locations in the center of Ghent together with a great group of fellow beer enthousiasts. Overall, it was a fantastic symposium in a beautiful city, and I am already looking forward to the next event!
Best regards,
Eric Wever
