From Food Security to Personalised Nutrition
Wolfram Weckwerth on food security, the limits of yield-driven agriculture, and our new research platform AIPN.
Metabolomics, the unbiased profiling of all small molecules in biological samples, has developed into a core technology for functional genomics, biobased economy and personalized medicine in the last decade. Recently, ecological metabolomics has emerged in ecosystem research and metagenomic studies. The quality of state-of-the-art metabolomics technology depends on the quality of the preparation workflows, the quality of metabolite libraries and workflows for structural elucidation of novel structures.
Because of the diversity of the metabolomes from organisms in functional and biomedical studies as well as the complexity of exo-metabolomes in environmental samples from marine, fresh water and terrestrial ecosystems an interdisciplinary approach is necessary to tackle this problem. Our team from faculties for Chemistry, Geosciences and Life Sciences brings together several internationally recognized labs at the University of Vienna to consolidate their specific and complementary metabolomics platforms and application fields to build a Vienna Metabolomics Center.
Our research includes a broad array of challenging topics from healthy aging to dought resistant plants, ocean water to cosmic dust.
Wolfram Weckwerth on food security, the limits of yield-driven agriculture, and our new research platform AIPN.
Hesperetin, a natural compound in citrus fruits, can help protect our cells from damage caused by too much fat.
Scientists from Wolfram Weckwerth group and Nankai-University link physical fitness to blood biomarkers, with aspartate emerging as a key player