University of California-San Diego · PharmacologyMicrobial Metabolomics Lab
Pieter C Dorrestein · La Jolla, California
Research Focus
Dr. Pieter C. Dorrestein's lab focuses on how the microorganisms in our gut interact with diet and the human body to influence health and disease. They are working on building a comprehensive database of microbial metabolites, which are small molecules produced by these microbes, to understand their role in conditions like inflammatory bowel disease. The lab combines advanced techniques in metabolomics and data science to discover and characterize these metabolites, aiming to advance nutritional precision medicine.
microbiomemicrobial metabolitesmetabolomicsinflammatory bowel diseasenutritional precision medicine
Research Aims
4AIM 01Build a microbial metabolite knowledge base for the scientific community.
AIM 02Discover and characterize up to 5 million microbial molecules.
AIM 03Identify microbial metabolites associated with inflammatory bowel disease and other disorders.
AIM 04Screen newly discovered metabolites in cell-based assays and animal models.
Skills the Lab Values
mass spectrometrydata miningmetabolite characterizationcombinatorial synthesiscell-based assays
Output against the department
Publications871top 3% of dept.13th of 462
this lab
most publishedleast published
Citations90ktop 1% of dept.5th of 462
this lab
most citedleast cited
Career totals from OpenAlex, compared against labs that share a department. A department spans everything from one paper to tens of thousands, so bar heights are on a log scale — otherwise the largest lab would flatten every other bar to a line.