Liz Khomenkov

Elizabeth Khomenkov will be joining the Malecki and Bradfield Labs in an effort to examine the relationship between the lipidome of environmental samples and human health. The overarching hypothesis is that lipidomics profiles can be used as proxies of environmental degradation, which in turn will be related to human disease. While experimental directions will be varied, a few priorities will be to: 1) Develop a lipid extraction protocols from environmental samples that is , low cost, reproducible, efficient and applicable to a broad spectra of sample matrices. 2) Test the importance of AI-dependent integration of lipid-species vs scientist directed integration of HPLC peaks. 3) Compare the lipidomes of a number of prototype environmental samples as an example of the power and potential of the system and 4) Contrast results from lipidomics analysis to microbiomic profiling that is done in parallel.