GENiE Workshop C. elegans Consensus Metabolic Reconstruction, Metabolism & Metab

February 24, 2017, 10:16:55 AM

Hi all,

this workshop might be interesting for people working with C. elegans.

Best regards,

Michael

GENiE Workshop C. elegans Consensus Metabolic Reconstruction, Metabolism & Metabolomics

April 19th-20th, 2017
Babraham Institute, Cambridge

Organizers: Olivia Casanueva, Janna Hastings, Christoph Kaleta, Michael Witting

Workshop website:
http://www.babraham.ac.uk/genie-workshop

Topic:
Five attributes define life: motility, growth, excitability, reproduction and metabolism, whereby metabolism is the most obligatory since it supplies energy and substances needed for all the others. Although studied for centuries, our picture of metabolism is still incomplete. A premier model organism for the study of metabolism is the small roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, which enables to study the relation between nutrition, gene expression, metabolism and phenotypic traits. Recently the first two metabolic reconstruction of C. elegans were published.
These reconstructions serve as first blueprints of C. elegans metabolism and lay the foundation for further research in this direction. The first reconstruction, iCEL1273, 1985 metabolic reactions and 887 compounds, while ElegCyc contains 1914 reactions and 1640 compounds. So far it is not clear to which extend the two reconstructions overlap. Parallel to this two published version different other groups have been working on their own reconstructions.
The topic of this workshop is to determine the current state in C. elegans metabolism research and how different metabolic reconstructions, published and nonpublished, can be integrated in a community effort leading to a comprehensive consensus C. elegans Metabolic Reconstruction. Within the workshop people from wet and dry-lab will exchange on their experiences and expectations and how different type of knowledge as well as data can be integrated on basis of such reconstructions. Special attention will be drawn to integrate omics data, e.g. transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics to expand this reconstruction beyond gene annotations and integration with ChEBI or WormBase and other Alliance of Genomic Resources Databases.
In future it is planned to have jamboree sessions on specific topics identified during this workshop such as specific metabolic pathways that are of particular interest to the community to further improve the quality of the C. elegans Metabolic Reconstruction 2.0.

Call for scientific talks/topics:
During the first day we will have several scientific sessions in which several participants can present their current work on C. elegans metabolism, metabolic reconstruction or metabolomics. Talks will be 15-20 minutes plus 10 minutes of Q&A. The evening session will include a key note speaker (Reza Salek) and a discussion round on future collaborative efforts. The second day will include practical work on flux balance analysis, metabolic reconstruction and other hands on activities.

Preliminary schedule:
April 19th:
12:00 – 13:30:    arrival, registration and lunch
13:30 – 15:00:    Session 1
15:00 – 15:30:    Coffee Break
15:30 – 16:30:    Keynote speaker
16:30 – 17:00:    Break
17:30 - 18:30:     Session 2
From ~19:30 – 20:00: Dinner Downtown

April 20th:
8:30 – 10:00:      Practical session 1
10:00 – 10:30:    Coffee Break
10:30 – 11:30:    Practical Session 2
11:30-12:30:       Round table
12:30                     packed Lunch

Please contact one of the organizers if you have further ideas and suggestions for a scientific talk.

Contact:
Olivia Casanueva
Group Leader
Babraham Institute
Epigenetics ISPG
Olivia.Casanueva@babraham.ac.uk

Janna Hastings
Babraham Institute
Epigenetics ISPG
Janna.Hastings@babraham.ac.uk

Christoph Kaleta
Research Group Medical Systems Biology
Institute for Experimental Medicine
Christian-Albrechts-University Kiel (UKSH Campus)
c.kaleta@iem.uni-kiel.de

Michael Witting
Research Team Leader “C. elegans Metabolomics & Lipidomics”
Research Unit Analytical BioGeoChemistry
Helmholtz Zentrum München