Metabolomics is an emerging and powerful tool that has the potential to revolutionize many fields, including medicine, agriculture, environmental science, and food science. By analyzing the unique chemical fingerprints left behind by cellular processes, metabolomics can provide valuable insights into complex biological systems. Despite its many challenges, the future of metabolomics looks bright, and we can expect to see many exciting new developments in this field in the years to come.
Several methodologies are presently used to design metabolomics experiments, including targeted analysis, untargeted analysis, and identification of unknown metabolites. All the aforementioned approaches are discussed below.
Targeted Metabolomics
Targeted metabolite profiling is a method for quantifying a previously identified sample of metabolites with similar chemical/biological characteristics. Targeted metabolomics aims to provide maximum sensitivity and selectivity using internal or external reference compounds. It leverages an understanding of a diverse set of metabolic enzymes, their kinetics, end products, and the known biochemical pathways in which the set of metabolites participate. This approach is often employed to determine the effect of genetic modifications or therapeutics in pharmacokinetic studies of drug metabolism.
Untargeted Metabolomics
Untargeted, namely discovery metabolomics, represents the unbiased analysis of small molecules present in a biological sample, under specific conditions. It aims to detect the alterations in the global metabolomic profiles of control and test groups to generate a hypothesis. Untargeted metabolomics employs a top-down approach to analyze the entire metabolic network concerning a specific biological condition. Further, it has been successfully used to identify the severity of different types of asthma.
In general, studies using an untargeted approach encounter challenges in identifying unknown metabolites. Therefore, further studies are required to re-analyze the generated data.
Unknown Metabolite Identification
An unknown metabolite is referred to as a small molecule or metabolite which may be detected frequently in a biological sample but whose chemical characteristics have not been determined. These metabolites can be separated and quantified based on the spectral data generated in a metabolomic experiment. The definitive identification of an unknown metabolite, instead of presumptive identification based on known mass or retention time, is a critical and decisive task that propels the analysis forward.
Clinical Applications of Metabolomics
Owing to the non-invasive nature and correlation of metabolomics studies with the phenotype, it is an ideal tool for the pharmaceutical and preventive healthcare industries. Personalized medicine or precision medicine is an emerging field with the potential to develop novel and efficacious custom-based clinical therapies, wherein metabolomics holds a potential role. Plant biotechnology, microbial biotechnology, and nutrigenomics are among other areas where metabolomic research is employed to generate deeper insights.