Prof. Elaine Holmes and Dr. Jia V. Li from ICL visited WIPM

On April 29th, 2011, Prof. Elaine Holmes and Dr. Jia V. Li from department of Biomolecular Medicine, Imperial College London, were invited by Prof. Wang Yulan to visit our institute, and had respectively delivered excellent reports entitled “Mapping Disease, Promoting Health” and “Gut microbial-Host Metabolic Cross Talk in Health and Disease”.

In the report, Prof. Elaine Holmes described in detail that metabonomics is the branch of science concerned with the quantitative understandings of the metabolite complement of integrated living systems and its dynamic responses to the changes of both endogenous factors and exogenous factors. As an important component of systems biology, metabonomics is a true multidisciplinary subject combining analytical chemistry, chemometrics and biological sciences. During these years, metabonomics has experienced comprehensive development and found widespread applications in toxicology, clinical and molecular pathology. At the same time she highlighted the application of nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer beside surgical bed, which provided convenient and real-time guidance for clinical operation. Their research took the first step from the laboratory to the clinical application.

Subsequently, Dr. Jia V. Li introduced to us the report of research on parasitic diseases during her doctoral period and changes of metabonome by gastric bypass surgery as a postdoctoral fellow. Combination of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) and denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE), she found that the intestinal microbial flora and host are closely related.

At the end of the report, Prof. Elaine Holmes and Dr. Jia V. Li carried out productive communication and discussion with research staff and students. Later, they visited the experimental platform of metabonomics, amazed by the development of our institute. And they hoped in-depth exchange.