I’m an organic chemist at heart, but for this meeting I’ve decided to explore beyond the wonders of total synthesis. So this morning, I attended one of the analytical chemistry sessions – and it was fascinating.

I opted for a session on metabolomics. For those of you who think this sounds like a rude word, let me tell you that it’s the study of metabolites as markers for disease (or at least that’s one application; it’s impossible to do justice to the full range of possibilities in one blog entry).

The session began with a talk by Lily Tong, from Greg Stephanopoulous’ lab. They were able to identify metabolites that are upregulated in patients that die of kidney failure. In this way, they were able to devise an accurate model to predict patients at most risk from the disease. Impressive stuff.

Rima Kaddurah-Daouk described a study of plasma taken from people with schizophrenia, and showed that each of three commonly-used antipsychotic drugs produces its own pattern of lipid-metabolite perturbation. This provides further evidence of the so-called ‘lipid hypothesis’ of schizophrenia, which suggests that the disease is not just caused by disturbances to neurotransmitters.

And finally, the award for gross presentation of the day goes to Andy Ewing, who is using fruitflies as models to study the effects of alcohol intoxication and dependence. This involves harvesting fruitflies’ heads, and we were treated to some lovely pictures of his special fruitfly-head masher in action.

It’s been a while since I looked at how metabolomics is progressing, and I was impressed at how far the field has come over the last few years. And now that I know fruitflies get drunk, I’ll never look at them the same way again.

Andy

Andy Mitchinson (Associate Editor, Nature)

Conservationists usually like their species of interest to be alive, not dead. But a couple of presentations here at INQUA suggest that the past has much to teach the present.

Nick Porch of the Australian National University calls his field ‘invasion paleoecology’. Basically, it’s looking in the fossil record to see what animals lived where at certain times. And it can help modern conservationists get a better handle on whether species are truly ‘native’ to a particular area or not, he told the meeting today.

Take ants. The kingpin of all ant studies, E.O. Wilson, has apparently said that ants are invasive species in the Pacific islands east of Samoa, and that they show up only after European ships arrived some 400 years ago. But Porch has looked at the ant record on the island of Rimatara in French Polynesia. And it turns out that there are plenty of ants in the fossil record there: They showed up about 900 years ago, when Polynesians first populated the islands. So ants came with people, but with the Polynesians (not the Europeans) first.

You might not care about ants in the South Pacific, but how about agricultural pests in Hawaii? An insect known as the nigra scale (Parasaissetia nigra) supposedly was introduced to Hawaii from Africa within the past few centuries. But it wasn’t, says Porch – his studies suggest it’s one of the most common creatures in the fossil record of the islands.

And what about birds in Britain? John Stewart of University College London has looked at whether birds such as eagle owls – the largest owl in Western Europe – actually used to live in Britain. Some pairs have been seen there breeding in the past decade, but no one is sure whether they are new to the island or have simply come back after having been gone for many generations.

See here (subscription required) for an earlier story on this topic — and one that ruffled Stewart’s feathers! At the meeting he said he was unhappy at how he had been quoted in the piece…read it yourself and see if you think it’s over the top.