The cover of the March 17, 2015 issue of the journal Immunity featured work co-published by researchers at General Metabolics, Agios Pharmaceuticals, and Washington University, investigating the specific metabolic pathways involved in the alternate polarization fates of mouse macrophages.
Macrophages are key components of the innate immune system, and the article entitled “Network Integration of Parallel Metabolic and Transcriptional Data Reveals Metabolic Modules that Regulate Macrophage Polarization,” (Immunity, vol. 42, pp. 419-430) applies a mathematical approach to integrate the results of metabolomics with RNASeq data collected on the same biological samples.
The results of the integrated omics analysis were validated by 13C-isotopic pathway labeling studies, as well as functional modulation of the macrophage polarization process. In the associated preview article, “A broken krebs cycle in macrophages,” Professor Luke A. J. O’Neill of Trinity College, Dublin, says that the work “…provides us with the most detailed account yet of metabolic changes in macrophage polarization, and they combine metabolomics with transcriptomics to reveal distinct modules in M1 and M2 macrophages.”
The approaches used in this article are the same as those we have employed for multiple General Metabolics customers. If you have research questions that would benefit from a systems approach, please contact us for additional information about integrated omics studies. They may provide the most direct answer to your difficult biological questions.
