HUMAN METABOLOMICS: STRATEGIES TO UNDERSTAND BIOLOGY

Abstract

Metabolomics is the scientific study of chemical processes involving metabolites, the small molecule substrates, intermediates, and products of cell metabolism. 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.The metabolome represents the complete set of metabolites in a biological cell, tissue, organ, or organism, which are the end products of cellular processes.Messenger RNA (mRNA), gene expression data, and proteomic analyses reveal the set of gene products being produced in the cell, data that represents one aspect of cellular function. Conversely, metabolic profiling can give an instantaneous snapshot of the physiology of that cell,and thus, metabolomics provides a direct "functional readout of the physiological state" of an organism.There are indeed quantifiable correlations between the metabolome and the other cellular ensembles (genome, transcriptome, proteome, and lipidome), which can be used to predict metabolite abundances in biological samples from, for example mRNA abundances.One of the ultimate challenges of systems biologyis to integrate metabolomics with all other -omics information to provide a better understanding of cellular biology.
The central principle of biology showing the flow of information from DNA to the phenotype. Associated with each stage is the corresponding systems biology tool, from genomics to metabolomics.