The field of metabolomics aims to discern changes in the metabolite profile (metabolome) of a biological system in response to environmental factors or experimental treatments. Steady state metabolomics measures the metabolite pools at a specific time point, providing a snapshot of the metabolic state of the system. Stable isotope labelled tracer techniques are a powerful tool used to enhance the interpretation of steady state metabolomic experiments. Tracer metabolomics tracks the flow of a labelled element, e.g. carbon, through metabolic pathways over time, revealing the dynamics and activity of metabolic fluxes. Combining steady state and stable isotope approaches offers a more holistic view of metabolism, integrating both static and kinetic dimensions of metabolic function.
"Metabolomics Australia, Natural Isotope Abundance Correction" (MA.NIAC) is an R-Shiny hosted application designed to standardise and streamline the processing and exploration of LC and IC MS-based stable isotope tracer experiments. The MA.NIAC application provides a web interface to input El-MAVEN processed LC/MS data, perform natural isotope abundance correction using the Bioconductor – IsoCorrectoR R package, pool metabolite isotopologue abundances, calculate Mass Isotopologue Distribution and Fractional Contribution. MA.NIAC supports single 13C, 15N and dual 13C + 15N tracer experiments. Data exploration includes the ability to group samples by cohort (e.g. wild type and knock-out), scale results by a normalisation factor, and specify a reference cohort for fold change calculations. The processing results can be saved to an Excel file, which captures all the outputs required for use in data interpretation and curation, figure generation and preparation of reports and publications. This greatly reduces the manual, onerous and error prone data processing and data transformation steps and enhances the data analysis.
Presented is an example of the use of the MA.NIAC application, demonstrating the workflow and visualisation capabilities.