Asilomar 2004

Asilomar Conference on Mass Spectrometry

Metabolite Profiling: Biomarker Discovery, Drug Efficacy and Fundamental Biochemistry

October 15 – 19, 2004

“Metabolites have gained increasing interest over the past five years largely

for their implications in diagnostic and pharmaceutical biomarker discovery.

Although numerous small molecules are routinely measured in biofluids as indicators

of health little is known about the vast majority of metabolites. For example,

biofluids contain thousands of components many of which remain structurally and

functionally uncharacterized. For this reason metabolite research and its potential

in health and pharmaceutical development has become one of the most exciting

areas of biological discovery. Three of the broad aims of this field are to identify

new disease biomarkers, monitor physiological reactions to administered drugs

and to understand the function of metabolites. This Asilomar meeting will focus

on the latest challenges in metabolite profiling spanning a broad range of interests

including research trends and instrument developments.”

If you are interested in participating as a speaker, please contact Gary Siuzdak.

Open Access to Scientific and Technical Information

I came across the background report for the Open Access to Scientific and Technical Information Conference when I was trying to figure out how much I liked the concept behind the Faculty of 1000 site. There is also a video of the webcast that has the discussion of this report (and other presentations). It’s good background for something we should all be thinking about.

The Faculty of 1000 concept is an interesting one – a Google for biomedical research articles. Experts rank the articles and a keyword search nets a page of hits as with Google’s Page Rank. But the Page Rank algorithm is more like the Citation Index with a page’s rank increasing with the number of inbound links. The Faculty of 1000 algorithm is based on popularity with potential for associated Tyranny of the Majority problems. Can popularity ranking stifle dissenting thought? We will soon see, it appears.

Terms and Definitions

I have finally embarked in earnest on the quest to unite ASMS and IUPAC to get the MS terms and definitions situation in order. It has been about a dozen years since there was a general agreement on MS terminology and there has been just a little bit of change in the field in the mean time. Fortunately, we in the mass spectrometry and analytical chemistry communities have quite a bit more information technology to draw on since the last terminology go round.

For starters, the IUPAC recommendations for MS terms can be found on line in Chapter 12 of the “Orange Book” entitled Compendium of Analytical Nomenclature. Be forewarned, though: the index in hypertext, but the text is in PDF so get ready for some downloads.

The Old ASMS Terms and Definitions glossary (that was on the ASMS website until June of 2000) can still be found in the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. I took the liberty of copying the hypertext into a Quicktopic Document Review comment forum as a way to start discussion.

Other important documents are David Sparkman’s book “The Mass Spectrometry Desk Reference” and reviews of this book in The Journal of Chemical Education and Trends in Biotechnology. Phil Price’s JASMS article is “Standard Definitions of Terms Relating to Mass Spectrometry,” J. Am. Soc. Mass Spectrom. 1991, 2, 336, which can be found on the JASMS site if you can remember how to log on (I can’t).

I am an associate membership of the IUPAC Analytical Chemistry Division and an at-large member of the ASMS board. Feel free to contact me in either, both, or neither of these capacities at kmurray@ch335c.chem.lsu.edu. I will also post any feedback on the MS Blog if you like.

         – Kermit Murray