The secrets of life lie in the molecular flexibility.

Welcome to Prof. Mariusz Jaremko's research group, the

Flexible Systems Lab!

Our research group works mainly on metabolites which are important for human health, and our current main focus in this discipline is oriented towards food, food safety, food quality, and food fraud by utilizing state-of-the-art instrumentation in metabolomics studies. We are also working on aggregation of amylin, a biological peptide that is connected tightly with diabetes II, a disease that is closely related to unhealthy diets. So, food science and the consequences of the food we eat are one of the main areas which the group Flexible Systems investigates. We are also working to develop methods and pulse programs in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) that allow us to uncover obscured metabolites and to detect them at lower concentrations, in order to understand metabolic pathways better. 


Why the name Flexible Systems?

It's simple; because metabolites, as well as amylin and its analogues, are very flexible systems i.e. amylin does not have a defined 3D structure, and in the case of the small molecules and metabolites we study, while they do have defined structures, they often exhibit very high levels of dynamic flexibility due to their size.

Untangling untidy folds to understand diseases

Copper ions could play a key role when peptide folding goes wrong and leads to harmful aggregates.

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Picking the best methods for metabolomics research

Comparison of different nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy methods has helped to identify the most robust approach for studying different types of biomolecules.

Latest Publications

Chapter 5 - Nuclear magnetic resonance in metabolomics

by Abdul-Hamid Emwas, Kacper Szczepski, Benjamin Gabriel Poulson, Ryan T. McKay, Leonardo Tenori, Edoardo Saccenti, Joanna Izabela Lachowicz, Mariusz Jaremko
Book Chapter Year: 2022 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-323-85062-9.00005-2

Abstract

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is one of the most common and powerful techniques used in metabolomics. The inherent quantitative, nondestructive, and nonbiased properties, together with minimal sample preparation/manipulation make NMR a potent approach to any investigative metabolic study involving biological systems. NMR spectroscopy offers several unique monitoring opportunities such as extremely high reproducibility, relatively short experiment times, a wide range of available experiments (e.g., multidimensional and multinuclear based), and advanced highly automated robotic sample handling/exchange technologies enabling potentially hundreds of samples per instrument in a single day. In this chapter, we highlight the primary advantages and limitations of NMR spectroscopy, introduce the most commonly applied NMR experiments in metabolomics, and review some of the recent advances with selected examples of novel applications, such as high-resolution magic-angle spinning for tissue samples, and pure shift NMR method as an example of a promising new approach that can be used to overcome the overlapping of 1D NMR spectra. The main advantages of NMR spectroscopy with a particular focus on reproducibility are also presented.