Metabolomic profiling of post-mortem brain reveals changes in amino acid and glucose metabolism in mental illness compared with controls

Publication date: Available online 26 February 2016 Source:Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal Author(s): Rong Zhang, Tong Zhang, Ali Muhsen Ali, Mohammed Al Washih, Benjamin Pickard, David G. Watson Metabolomic profiling was carried out on 53 post mortem brain samples from subjects diagnosed with schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder (SDB), diabetes and controls. Chromatography on a ZICpHILIC column was used with detection by Orbitrap mass spectrometry. Data extraction was carried out with m/z Mine 2.14 with metabolite searching against an in-house database. There was no clear discrimination between the controls and the SDB samples on the basis of a Principal Components Analysis (PCA) model of 755 identified or putatively identified metabolites. Orthogonal Partial Least Square Discriminant Analysis (OPLSDA) produced clear separation between 17 of the controls and 19 of the SDB samples (R2CUM 0.976, Q2 0.671, p-value of the cross-validated ANOVA score 0.0024). The most important metabolites producing discrimination were: the lipophilic amino acids leucine/isoleucine, proline, methionine, phenylalanine and tyrosine; the neurotransmitters GABA and NAAG and sugar metabolites sorbitol, gluconic acid, xylitol, ribitol, arabinotol and erythritol. Eight samples from diabetic brains were analysed six of which grouped with the SDB samples without compromising the model (R2 CUM 0.850, Q2 CUM 0.534, p-value for cross-validated ANOVA score 0.00087). T...
Source: Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal - Category: Biotechnology Source Type: research