Metabolomics

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Metabolomics is the scientific study of chemical processes involving metabolites. Specifically, metabolomics is the "systematic study of the unique chemical fingerprints that specific cellular processes leave behind", the study of their small-molecule metabolite profiles.[1] The metabolome represents the collection of all metabolites in a biological cell, tissue, organ or organism, which are the end products of cellular processes.[2] Thus, while mRNA gene expression data and proteomic analyses do not tell the whole story of what might be happening in a cell, metabolic profiling can give an instantaneous snapshot of the physiology of that cell. One of the challenges of systems biology and functional genomics is to integrate proteomic, transcriptomic, and metabolomic information to give a more complete picture of living organisms.
Metabolome refers to the complete set of small-molecule metabolites (such as metabolic intermediates, hormones and other signaling molecules, and secondary metabolites) to be found within a biological sample, such as a single organism.[16][17] The word was coined in analogy with transcriptomics and proteomics; like the transcriptome and the proteome, the metabolome is dynamic, changing from second to second. Although the metabolome can be defined readily enough, it is not currently possible to analyse the entire range of metabolites by a single analytical method. The first metabolite database(called METLIN) for searching m/z values from mass spectrometry data was developed by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute in 2005.[12] In January 2007, scientists at the University of Alberta and the University of Calgary completed the first draft of the human metabolome. They catalogued approximately 2500 metabolites, 1200 drugs and 3500 food components that can be found in the human body, as reported in the literature.[13] This information, available at the Human Metabolome Database (www.hmdb.ca) and based on analysis of information available in the current scientific literature, is far from complete.[18] In contrast, much more is known about the metabolomes of other organisms. For example, over 50,000 metabolites have been characterized from the plant kingdom, and many thousands of metabolites have been identified and/or characterized from single plants.[19][20]

Each type of cell and tissue has a unique metabolic 'fingerprint' that can elucidate organ or tissue-specific information, while the study of biofluids can give more generalized though less specialized information. The most commonly used biofluids include urine and plasma because they offer several advantages.[21] Such biofluids are reasonably easy to obtain[22] and are collected noninvasively or relatively noninvasively[23] which can allow for high temporal resolution, even in most critically ill patients. They are always at dynamic equilibrium with the body and therefore sufficiently describe the host as a whole.[24]