This course will provide an introduction to metabolomics through lectures and hands-on sessions, using publicly available data, software, and tools. Participants will become familiar with standardised workflows as well as with the current state of experimental design, data acquisition (LC-MS, MS imaging), processing, and modelling. In addition, they will learn about community standards and sharing in metabolomics, particularly through the use of EMBL-EBI’s MetaboLights repository and Galaxy infrastructure. Participants will learn through hands-on tutorials to use tools available for data analysis and data submission. Additionally, case studies will be discussed to show how to employ the week’s learning.

Who is this course for?

This course is aimed at researchers who are new to the field of metabolomics and wish to learn about the process of conducting a metabolomics study. The course will benefit those who are planning to integrate metabolomics into their work, either moving into the field or as an investigator from other -omics. We will primarily focus on a basic introduction to metabolomics with worked examples using a predesigned LC-MS analysis workflow.

Basic knowledge of programming languages can be an advantage (e.g. you understand the basic command line functioning, you can navigate Galaxy tutorials). We recommend these free resources or other similar ones:

• The Unix Shell: https://swcarpentry.github.io/shell-novice/
• A Short Introduction to Galaxy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRdlOcVgjRY 

What will I learn?

Learning outcomes

After the course you should be able to:

• Perform basic data acquisition, processing, and modelling in metabolomics 
• Estimate what factors contribute to designing a successful metabolomics study
• Describe the issues of data standards and sharing in metabolomics
• Access and use public metabolomics resources 
• Cite the principles of creating a standardised workflow to perform basic metabolomics analysis
   

Course content

During this course you will learn about: 

• Basic metabolomics experimental design, acquisition, and analysis
• Public metabolomics resources: MetaboLights, Galaxy 
• Open source metabolomics tools made available through customisable workflows
• Case study based on a published/public example

This course is currently under development. Click to register your interest using the button on the right-hand side of this course website to hear as the course develops.