Metabolomics: An Integral Technique in Systems Biology

Abstract

Metabolomics is the unbiased identification and state-specific quantification of all metabolites in a cell, tissue or whole organism, and has developed rapidly into one of the cornerstones of postgenomic techniques for the quantitative analysis of molecular phenotypes. These large-scale analyses of metabolites are intimately bound to advancements in MS technologies and have emerged in parallel with the development of novel mass analyzers and hyphenated techniques, as well as with the combination of different techniques to cope with the physicochemical diversity of a metabolome. This review gives a brief description of the development and applications of these technologies in biochemistry and systems biology, and discusses their significance in the postgenomic era. Especially, the systematic relation between high-throughput metabolomic data and their interpretation with respect to the underlying biochemical regulatory network is discussed.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The author has no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.