Why Metabonomics?

Metabonomics can be used to quantitatively measuredynamic biochemical responses of living organismsto physiological or pathological stimuli. A range ofanalytical tools such as high-resolution nuclear magneticresonance (NMR) spectroscopy and mass spectrometry(MS) combined with multivariate statistical analysiscan be employed to create comprehensive metabolicsignatures of biological samples including urine, plasma,faecal water and tissue extracts. These metabolicsignatures can reflect the physiological or pathologicalcondition of the organism and indicate imbalances inthe homeostatic regulation of tissues and extracellularfluids. This technology has been employed in a diverserange of application areas including investigation ofdisease mechanisms, diagnosis/prognosis of pathologies,nutritional interventions and drug toxicity. Metabolicprofiling is becoming increasingly important inidentifying biomarkers of disease progression and drugintervention, and can provide additional informationto support or aid the interpretation of genomic andproteomic data. With the new generation of postgenomictechnologies, the paradigm in many biologicalfields has shifted to either top down systems biologyapproaches, aiming to achieve a general understandingof the global and integrated response of an organismor to bottom up modelling of specific pathways andnetworks using a priori knowledge based on mininglarge bodies of literature. Whilst metabolic profilinglends itself to either approach, using it in an exploratoryand hypothesis generating capacity clearly allows newmechanisms to be uncovered.