Gary Siuzdak is an American chemist best known for his work in the field of

metabolomics Metabolomics is the scientific study of chemical processes involving metabolites, the small molecule substrates, intermediates, and products of cell metabolism. Specifically, metabolomics is the "systematic study of the unique chemical fingerprin ...

, activity metabolomics (a termed coined in 2019), and mass spectrometry. His lab discovered indole-3-propionic acid as a gut bacteria derived metabolite in 2009. He is currently the Professor and Director of The Center for Metabolomics and Mass Spectrometry at

Scripps Research Scripps Research, previously known as The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), is a nonprofit American medical research facility that focuses on research and education in the biomedical sciences. Headquartered in San Diego, California, the institu ...

in La Jolla, California. Siuzdak has also made contributions to virus analysis, viral structural dynamics, as well as developing mass spectrometry imaging technology using nanostructured surfaces. The Siuzdak lab is also responsible for creating the research tools

XCMS The X Window System core protocolRobert W. Scheifler and James Gettys: ''X Window System: Core and extension protocols, X version 11, releases 6 and 6.1'', Digital Press 1996, RFC 1013Grant EdwardsAn Introduction to X11 User Interfaces/ref> is the ...

METLIN The METLIN Metabolite and Chemical Entity Database is the largest repository of experimental tandem mass spectrometry and neutral loss data acquired from standards. The tandem mass spectrometry data on over 870,000 molecular standards (as of Augu ...

, METLIN Neutral Loss and Q-MRM. As of January 2021, the

platform has over 50,000 registered users. Siuzdak studied chemistry (B.S.) and applied mathematics (B.A.) at Rhode Island College. He then went to Dartmouth College for his graduate work where he built his first mass spectrometer to perform multi-photon ionization mass spectrometry experiments and occasionally compete in powerlifting. At Dartmouth he received his Ph.D in Physical Chemistry (March 29, 1990) and on April 1, 1990 started at Scripps Research. In 2017 Siuzdak received an honorary doctorate (with

Emmanuelle Charpentier Emmanuelle Marie Charpentier (; born 11 December 1968) is a French professor and researcher in microbiology, genetics, and biochemistry. As of 2015, she has been a director at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin. In 2018, sh ...

) from Umeå University for his work in

. Siuzdak has hundreds o
papers
and has authored two books: ''Mass Spectrometry for Biotechnology'' (1996) and ''The Expanding Role of Mass Spectrometry in Biotechnology'' (2003) as well as ''The Expanding Role of Mass Spectrometry in Biotechnology 2nd Ed.'' (2006).

Notable research

From 1994 to the present the Siuzdak lab has been working on activity

. using liquid chromatography mass spectrometry-based metabolomics to identify metabolites that alter phenotype. His initial efforts with

Richard Lerner Richard Alan Lerner (August 26, 1938 – December 2, 2021) was an American research chemist. Best known for his work on catalytic antibodies, Lerner served as President of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) until January 1, 2012, and was a ...

, used

liquid chromatography mass spectrometry A liquid is a nearly incompressible fluid that conforms to the shape of its container but retains a (nearly) constant volume independent of pressure. As such, it is one of the four fundamental states of matter (the others being solid, gas, a ...

to perform metabolomic experiments on the cerebral spinal fluid of sleep deprived animals. '' cis-9,10-octadecenoamide'', a novel

lipid Lipids are a broad group of naturally-occurring molecules which includes fats, waxes, sterols, fat-soluble vitamins (such as vitamins A, D, E and K), monoglycerides, diglycerides, phospholipids, and others. The functions of lipids include ...

hormone A hormone (from the Greek participle , "setting in motion") is a class of signaling molecules in multicellular organisms that are sent to distant organs by complex biological processes to regulate physiology and behavior. Hormones are required ...

(also known as

oleamide Oleamide is an organic compound with the formula CH3(CH2)7CH=CH(CH2)7CONH2(. It is the amide derived from the fatty acid oleic acid. It is a colorless waxy solid and occurs in nature. Sometimes labeled as a fatty acid primary amide (FAPA), it is ...

), was observed and shown to have sleep inducing properties. This work is one of the earliest such experiments combining liquid chromatography mass spectrometry and metabolomics to identify active metabolites. Another notable activity

effort with Oscar Yanes (Spain) identified neuroprotectin D1 as a metabolite that promotes stem cell differentiation. In 1996 whole virus analysis was performed with an electrospray ionization mass spectrometer where the virus was collected and successfully tested for viability. Later, he and his collaborators provided the first example of a whole intact virus (tobacco mosaic virus) being mass measured using a charge detection mass spectrometer, an instrument designed by Henry Benner and Stephen Fuerstenau at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs. In 1999, the Siuzdak lab described the use of nanostructures to enhance desorption/ionization on porous silicon of small molecules ( DIOS), this is also known as the first surface-based example of surface-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry (SALDI-MS). This technology went on to be expanded using fluorinated initiator molecules used within the porous silicon and was described as Na''nost''ructure Initiator Mass Spectrometry (NIMS)'','' it is also known as Nanostructure Imaging Mass Spectrometry (NIMS) because of its expanded application to imaging. In 2005, the Siuzdak lab was engaged in identifying dysregulated metabolic peaks from

data sets, to address the issue retention time alignment they developed the first algorithm that allowed for the nonlinear alignment of metabolomics data called

. From the early 2000s to the present, the Siuzdak lab created and has been expanding the tandem mass spectrometry database known as

is made up solely of experimental data generated from high resolution tandem mass spectrometry instrumentation, all of the data is derived from molecular standards. METLIN (as of August 2022) has over 870,000 molecular standards with experimental tandem mass spectrometry data.

is unique with respect to its size, as other databases are over an order of magnitude smaller, and it is also unique because all of METLIN's tandem mass spectrometry data has been systematically generated at multiple collision energies and in positive and negative ionization modes. In 2020, the Siuzdak lab building off their work with Xavi Domingo and

, developed Enhanced In-Source Fragmentation/Annotation (EISA) to facilitate the fragmentation, identification, and quantification (via Q-MRM) of molecules without the use of tandem mass spectrometry.

References

External links

Siuzdak Lab at Scripps Research
{{DEFAULTSORT:Siuzdak, Gary Rhode Island College alumni Dartmouth College alumni Scripps Research faculty Living people 20th-century American chemists 21st-century American chemists 1961 births