Metabolomics

Abstract

As the goal of genomics is to study all of our genes, the goal of metabolomics is to profile the entire complement of the small molecules that are involved in processes from signaling to transcription, from building proteins, to creating and shuttling energy. This chapter describes the challenges of nutritional metabolomics along with the current ways that nutrition scientists can overcome these challenges to gain more insights into the downstream metabolic effects of nutrition. Metabolomic applications in nutritional research are growing rapidly, primarily because metabolomics and nutrition address the same questions in metabolism, metabolic perturbations, oxidation, and inflammation as primary processes that maintain human health. Analytical and profiling techniques in metabolomics also are evolving rapidly, and the analytical platforms currently employed in metabolomic studies are summarized in this chapter along with the required data processing software. The examples provided in this chapter demonstrate that metabolomics is playing an increasingly important role in nutritional research, serving as a dietary assessment tool, a predictive tool for nutritional effects (nutrimetabonomics) and an epidemiological profiling tool, all of which involve gut microbial-mammalian co-metabolism. © 2012 International Life Sciences Institute.