Novel metabolic pathways in physiology and disease

Life and health require that many different chemical reactions occur in a coordinated manner. This metabolic activity is usually represented in well-defined pathways. Yet, advances in mass-spectrometry have revealed that our metabolite repertoire is much larger than expected from these known pathways. Furthermore, a sizeable number of genes code for proteins of unknown function that look like enzymes, but might act outside of canonical metabolic pathways. In my lab, we are trying to discover the functions of these unknown metabolites and enzymes by combining state-of-the art mass spectrometry with genetic and enzymological approaches. We believe that understanding the function of non-canonical enzymes will give novel insights into the pathophysiology of several human diseases, and might help develop novel therapies.