Justin van der Hooft's Biography

Justin van der Hooft, Research Associate, University of Glasgow

Justin van der Hooft is currently working as research associate at Glasgow Polyomics. Glasgow Polyomics is a facility equipped for the collection, analysis and integration of high-throughput biological — that is, omics — datasets (http://www.polyomics.gla.ac.uk/).
Justin is part of the (mass spectrometry based) metabolomics team, while also collaborating with the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy laboratory.

The work of Justin centres around systematic metabolite identification and annotation. During his thesis, he developed workflows for the structural elucidation of plant and plant-derived metabolites using high resolution mass spectrometry (MS) and NMR. The polyphenol content of tomatoes and tea was examined using in-depth MS fragmentation approaches. Additionally, to obtain precise identifications of positional isomers, which is not possible based on MS only, a combinatory approach of MS and NMR was developed and used to fully elucidate numerous small molecules. Justin then applied the developed metabolite identification strategies to elucidate plant-derived metabolites present in urine after tea intake. His current work is focused on the MS based annotation of endogenous human metabolites routinely detected at Glasgow Polyomics.

Justin is member of the Metabolomics Society and the Early-Career Members Network (EMN) committee thereof. He conducted his thesis at Wageningen University, The Netherlands, where he developed his interests in systematic metabolite identification and annotation, and his fascination for the unravelling of complex biological extracts. After finalizing his thesis, he was junior researcher at Plant Research International before moving to the group of Prof. Alan Crozier at the University of Glasgow, where he worked on the bioavailability of epicatechin, an abundant flavonoid in green tea, red wine, and chocolate. Justin then moved to Glasgow Polyomics to pursue his work on metabolite annotation based on different MS fragmentation approaches.