代谢组学研究进展

Recent Advances in Metabonomics

代谢组学是功能基因组学和系统生物学研究不可或缺的重要组成部分,是通过考察生物体系受刺激或扰动前后(如将某个特定的基因变异或环境变化后)代谢产物的动态变化,研究生物体系的代谢网络的一种技术。近年来,在药物研发、疾病研究、植物和微生物等领域发展迅速,但在分析技术、方法学和应用等方面急需突破。

Metabonomics （or metabolomics） aims at the comprehensive and quantitative analysis of the wide arrays of metabolites in biological samples. Metabonomics has been labeled as one of the new ＂ omics＂ joining genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics as a science employed toward the understanding of global systems biology. It has been widely applied in many research areas including drug toxicology, biomarker discovery, functional genomics, and molecular pathology etc. The comprehensive analysis of the metabonome is particularly challenging due to the diverse chemical natures of metabolites. Metabonomics investigations require special approaches for sample preparation, data-rich analytical chemical measurements, and information mining. The outputs from a metabonomics study allow sample classification, biomarker discovery, and interpretation of the reasons for classification information. This review focuses on the currently new advances in various technical platforms of metabonomics and its applications in drug discovery and development, disease biomarker identification, plant and microbe related fields.