Metabolomics known compounds

Metabolomics studies the entire metabolism of an organism. It is possible to consider characterising the complex pattern of cellular proteins and metabolites that are excreted in urine. Pattern recognition techniques of nuclear magnetic resonance spectra have been applied to determine the dose-response using certain classical liver and kidney toxicants (Robertson et al, 2000). This could well provide a signature of the functional state of the kidney, and perturbations in the pattern as a result of exposure to a chemical could be observed. But first it would be necessary to understand how compounds with known effects on the kidney affect these processes. 

It is already well known that bioactive food compounds can interact with genes affecting transcription factors, protein expression, and metabolite production. The study of these complex interactions requires the development of advanced analytical approaches combined with bioinformatics. Thus, to carry out these studies transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics approaches are now being employed together with an adequate integration of the information that... 

The increasing accessibility of bench-top LC-MS systems to researchers of all disciplines, combined with the tandem and high-resolution mass spectrometry capabilities of such instruments, will only increase the number of applications to which LC-MS can be directed. The examples documented in this chapter illustrate some of the diversity and power of the techniques, including analytical applications for known analytes in various matrices, metabolomic analysis, the tentative structural identification of novel compounds, and the screening of extracts for minor, and perhaps novel, components of the alkaloidal profile of plants. 

Metabolomics is an emerging field in analytical chemistry and can be regarded as the end point of the omics cascade. In its most ambitious global form, metabolomics tries to comprehensively analyze known and nnknown metabolites in a given biological sample—metabolome—dealing with the analysis of low molecular mass compounds (<1500 Da) such as amino acids, peptides, organic acids, vitamins, polyphenols alkaloids, nucleic acids, carbohydrates, and other small molecules [1]. 

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