Leadership:
John Denu, PhD, Director
Judith Simcox, PhD, Associate Director
Core Description:
The etiology of diabetes is complex and involves multiorgan dysregulation of biomolecules including metabolites, proteins, and lipids. These biomolecules are not only dysregulated in response to diabetes but directly regulate insulin production and the development of insulin resistance. Quantitative measurements of biomolecules are necessary to identify biomarkers of diabetes progression, to understand molecular regulation of diabetes and its complications, and to identify novel diabetes treatments. The Integrative Omics Core (IOC) will provide mass spectrometry (MS) based omics analyses and bioinformatics support to integrate additional complementary multi-omics (transcriptomics, ChIP-Seq, e.g.), enabling a comprehensive assessment of diabetes-relevant biology. The University of Wisconsin (UW)-Madison is incredibly rich in MS resources, including no less than one dozen faculty expert laboratories, an NIH National Center for MS technology development, and nearly a half dozen MS core facilities. However, many members do not have ready access to these facilities nor have the knowledge of how best to design and execute their studies to leverage the available resources. The work addresses a fundamental gap in knowledge allowing researchers to determine how metabolites, proteins, and lipids function as signaling molecules to impact glucose homeostasis, insulin sensitivity, and energy balance. The innovative model of this core will meet a critical need to leverage the highly specialized expertise and the expensive equipment that is already available on our campuses, while providing new services and encouraging collaborative diabetes research. This core is under development but we have provided links below for resources on campus for many of our key partners.
Advanced Lipodomics and Metabolomics Platform – Contact Judith Simcox
Clinical Metabolomics – Contact Ying Ge
Center for Biomedical Mass Spectrometry Research
Epigenetic Metabolomics – Contact John Denu
Wisconsin Center for NanoBiosystems – Contact Lingjun Li
NCQBCS – National Center for Quantitative Biology of Complex Systems