West Coast Metabolomics Center @ University of California, Davis

Contacts

Dr. Oliver Fiehn, Lab Director ofiehn@ucdavis.edu
Kelly Paglia, Project Manager metabolomics@ucdavis.edu
Luis Valdiviez, Lab Manager lmvaldiviez@ucdavis.edu

The West Coast Metabolomics Center is a NIH Regional Resource Core designed to expand the availability of metabolomics services to investigators in many diverse fields while simultaneously advancing the state-of-the art in metabolomics research.

The West Coast Metabolomics Center offers fee-based services to biomedical, preclinical and clinical researchers through its Central Service Core laboratories, while advancing the state of metabolomics research through its Advanced Services laboratories.

The West Coast Metabolomics Center provides services, training and collaboration in metabolomics. Fee-based services are offered to both academic and industry researchers for biomedical, preclinical, and clinical projects. Our outreach program includes hands-on training courses as well as freely available webinars, a YouTube channel, informatics tools and databases.

Our services include both untargeted and targeted assays. All assays utilize internal standards. Result data are provided in addition to raw data, and all annotated compounds are detailed with extensive metadata including MSI-confidence levels. Four untargeted assays have been developed to specifically encompass (1) primary metabolites, (2) complex lipids, (3) biogenic amines, and (4) polyphenols. Additionally, we offer targeted platforms: (5) short-chain fatty acids, (6) bile acids, (7) steroids, and (8) oxylipins.

Assays:

• Primary metabolites by GCTOF MS
  
• Complex lipids by RPLC accurate mass MS/MS
  
• Biogenic amines by HILIC accurate mass MS/MS
  
• Polyphenols RPLC accurate mass MS/MS
  
• Targeted: short chain fatty acids
  
• Targeted: bile acids
  
• Targeted: steroids
  
• Targeted: oxylipins

Costs
Per-sample cost vary depending on the number of samples submitted, type of samples, and which assay(s) are selected. For an average sample set of n=50 samples, the per-sample costs are (intramural University of California / extramural academic / extramural industry):

• Primary metabolites: $50/$70/$83
  
• Complex lipids: $75/$110/$132
  
• Biogenic amines: $75/$110/$132
  
• Polyphenols: $75/$110/$132
  
• Short chain fatty acids: $67/$106/$126
  
• Bile acids: $67/$106/$126
  
• Steroids: $67/$106/$126
  
• Oxylipins: $67/$106/$126

Equipment

• 2 – ThermoFisher Orbital Ion Traps Q-Exactive HF+ and HFx/ with Vanquish UPLCs
  
• 2 – ThermoFisher Altis triple quadrupole mass spectrometers with Vanquish UPLCs
  
• 2 – Agilent 6530 quadrupole time of flight mass spectrometers with Agilent 1290 UPLCs
  
• 1 – Agilent 6550 quadrupole time of flight mass spectrometer with Agilent 1290 UPLCs
  
• 1 – Agilent 6546 quadrupole time of flight mass spectrometer with Agilent 1290 UPLCs
  
• 1 – Sciex 6600 TripleTOF mass spectrometer with microUPLC
  
• 1 – Sciex QTRAP 6500+ with ThermoFisher Vanquish UPLC
  
• 1 – Bruker trapped ion mobility-time of flight mass spectrometer pro2, Flex ESI and MALDI
  
• 5 – Leco Pegasus time of flight mass spectrometer, models III / IV and BT
  
• 1 – Agilent 7250 GC-quadrupole time of flight mass spectrometer

Service Areas

• Metabolomics
  
• Lipidomics
  
• Compound identification
  
• Unknown identification
  
• Metabolites
  
• Liquid chromatography
  
• Gas chromatography
  
• Mass spectrometry
  
• Relative quantification
  
• Untargeted
  
• Targeted
  
• Metabolite profiling
  
• GC-MS
  
• LC-MS
  
• Primary metabolites
  
• Secondary metabolites
  
• Biogenic amines
  
• Steroids
  
• Bile acids
  
• Oxylipins

Relevant Publications

• Metabolite measurement: pitfalls to avoid and practices to follow
  
• Toward Merging Untargeted and Targeted Methods in Mass Spectrometry-Based Metabolomics and Lipidomics
  
• Systematic error removal using random forest for normalizing large-scale untargeted lipidomics data
  
• A metabolome atlas of the aging mouse brain
  
• A comprehensive plasma metabolomics dataset for a cohort of mouse knockouts within the international mouse phenotyping consortium

User guidelines:
To submit samples, please fill out the sample list template (document attached), shipping checklist (document attached), online submission form, and create a billing account in PPMS.