The significance of metabolomics in human health

GOMEZ-CASATI, D.F; GRISOLIA, M.J.; BUSI, M.V.

Medical and Health Genomics. Metabolomics: Concept, Methods and Applications

Academics Press -ELSEVIER

Lugar: LONDON; Año: 2016; p. 89 - 100

Metabolites are the ultimate response of biological systemsto genetic or environmental changes [1]. They are structurallyand chemically heterogeneous and show dynamism intime and space. For this reason, the analytical proceduresin their measurement presents technical and experimentalchallenges [2].Metabolomics is the study of the complete, nonbiased,high-throughput analysis of a complex collection ofmetabolites present in a cell or tissue under a particularset of conditions, generating a biochemical profile calleda metabolome [3]. This contributes to our understanding ofthe complex molecular interactions in biological systems[4]. It is worth recalling that there is a similar term, metabonomics,which is usually applied only to studies of humanhealth, and usually compares profiles instead of identifyingindividual compounds.