Baker_Colleen.pdf

Abstract

Osteochondritis dissecans is a common cause of degenerative joint disease in all horse breeds. Given the similarity between human and horse cartilage, horses serve as model organisms to understand translatable metabolic differences. 1H NMR spectroscopy is a powerful tool commonly used to identify metabolites. However, most metabolomic studies limit their focus on small molecules by conducting relaxation filtered experiments. This study focuses on expanding the 1H NMR experiments that are routinely used. Through these additional experiments, a more complete metabolic profile is deduced consisting of both macromolecules and small molecules. This study carefully processes NMR data for each experiment using MestReNova and develops a processing template. Metabolites found in OCD horse blood serum samples are assigned. Multivariate analysis in SIMCA creates OPLS-DA models that reveal separation between the two classes. Coefficient plots used in conjunction with the original spectra reveal the most significant metabolic variations. Significant variations were not limited to small molecules, and future studies should focus on understanding metabolic differences due to lipoprotein subgroups. Observations from these coefficient plots set the foundation to investigate casual relationships between metabolites and OCD.