Ian Colquhoun

Visiting Worker

Research Area: Metabolomics

Contact Details:

Institute of Food Research,
Norwich Research Park,
Colney, Norwich,
NR4 7UA
UK
ian.colquhoun@ifr.ac.uk

Research interests

I have been using metabolite profiling in food research since the late 1990s. We worked initially on food authentication and developed nmr and chemometrics techniques that were generally applicable to the analysis of complex mixtures. This led to our participation from 2000 in major EU and FSA projects on the use of metabolite profiling to establish substantial equivalence of GM and conventional foods. In 2005 we obtained bbsrc funds to purchase an NMR/LC/MS system that now forms the core equipment of the metabolomics partnership (additional LC/MS facilities were added in 2008). The partnership provides facilities for the IFR research programmes across the fields of nutrition studies, food, plant and microbial metabolomics, runs the NMR and MS instruments needed for these analyses and carries out statistical analysis and interpretation. We have established robust NMR based methods for metabolomics of biofluids, plant extracts and microbial growth media and are now developing LC/MS based methods that will prove equally reliable but use the added sensitivity of MS to extend the range of compounds detected.

I am a Member of the Royal Society of Chemistry and Metabolomics Society