Metabolomics

Primary and secondary metabolites represent the end products of genetic expression and the comprehensive analysis of large numbers of metabolites has been termed metabolomics. These qualitative and quantitative analyses provide a holistic view of the biochemical status or biochemical phenotype of an organism. The correlations of biochemical information with genetic and molecular data are very useful in providing better insight into the functions of unknown gene or systems response to external stimuli. Metabolomic studies also offer unique opportunities to study regulation and signaling under the control of small molecules (i.e., metabolites). Quite often, signaling and regulation are transparent at the transcriptome and/or proteome level. Finally, metabolomics offers the unbiased ability to differentiate organisms or cell states based on metabolite levels that may or may not produce visible phenotypes/genotypes. Although metabolomics is quite promising, several challenges still exist that influence the implementation of a metabolomic approach, including chemical complexity, analytical and biological variance, and dynamic range. Our group is employing selective extraction and parallel technologies to address these challenges and provide a comprehensive view of the metabolome. This approach is described in the following pages.

References	Analytical Approaches	Bioinformatics
Figure 1: An integrated functional genomic approach monitors quantitative and qualitative differences in the transcriptome, proteome, and metabolome as a means to study gene function and cellular responses to external stimuli. The large amount of information contained within the profile data is deposited into relational databases where it can be correlated, compared, and interrogated by bioinformatic tools to yield a better understanding of biology. Profile data are also emerging as unique means of annotating genome data. Confirmation of putative proteins through proteome analysis is one example.
Corey Broeckling Tony Duran David Huhman