Highlights

MSCollaboratory Overview

Studying aquatic ecosystems is essential to understanding Earth’s evolutionary history as well as unlocking many aspects that are key to maintaining the future of our planet, namely its climate, ecosystems, and resources. However, as over 95% of the world’s oceans remain unexplored, the drive to further our knowledge of aquatic symbioses strengthens. Founded by Professor Pieter Dorrestein and directed by Mauricio Caraballo, Ph.D., UC San Diego’s Mass Spectrometry Collaboratory (MSCollaboratory) works to democratize molecular analysis of marine symbiosis and diverse aquatic ecosystems using mass spectrometry approaches. 

Funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the MSCollaboratory is focused on creating capabilities in metabolomics by providing hands-on training and access to mass spectrometry approaches and aims to accelerate the discovery of small molecules and their role as mediators of symbiotic relationships. With collaborators investigating a wide range of organisms and ecosystems, the MSCollaboratory has generated datasets from nearly 8,000 unique samples corresponding to fish (e.g., Gasterosteus aculeatus, Fundulus heteroclitus, Abudefduf saxatilis, Abudefduf troschelii), spotted salamanders (Ambystoma maculatum), squids (Euprymna scolopes), seagrass (Zostera marina), corals (e.g., Montipora, Porites rus, Acropora millepora) and other organisms and environments.

Since its establishment in September 2023, the MSCollaboratory has interacted with over 30 research groups across various universities across the world in a variety of aspects of the project, including sample preparation, sample submission, training with mass spectrometry, and data analysis. Furthermore, the MSCollaboratory has hosted workshops focusing on data analysis and untargeted metabolomics approaches for scientists in the global marine community. The MSCollaboratory thus aims to foster new collaborations and strengthen community connections to enhance knowledge and discoveries related to molecular data collection and aquatic symbiosis. 

Visit the  MassIVE repository (filtered by "mscollaboratory" under keywords) to access the datasets collected under the MSCollaboratory initiative.  

Funding: https://www.moore.org/grant-detail?grantId=GBMF12120