Nature offers a technology feature on Metabolomics this week.

Metabolomics is the “systematic study of the unique chemical fingerprints that specific cellular processes leave behind” - specifically, the study of their small-molecule metabolite profiles. The metabolome represents the collection of all metabolites in a biological organism, which are the end products of its gene expression. 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 is to integrate proteomic, transcriptomic, and metabolomic information to give a more complete picture of living organisms. (Thanks, Wikipedia!)

Metabolomics: Biochemistry’s new look p697

Until now, metabolomics researchers have had to adapt technology developed mainly for proteomics. But there are now solutions designed with them in mind. Nathan Blow reports.

Nathan Blow - doi:10.1038/455697a
Full Text | PDF (638K)
See also: Editor’s summary

Metabolomics: Dark matter p698

doi:10.1038/455698a
Full Text | PDF (149K)

Metabolomics: Wine-omics p699

doi:10.1038/455699a
Full Text | PDF (210K)

Metabolomics: Table of suppliers p701

doi:10.1038/455701a
Full Text | PDF (53K)

Further reading:

• B. Daviss, “Growing pains for metabolomics,” The Scientist, 19[8]:25-28, April 25, 2005
• Metabolomics
• The Human Metabolomics Project website
• The Metabolomics Society website