Chapter 20 - Pan-metabolomics and its applications

Abstract

With the implementation of significant scientific projects such as the Human Genome Project, genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics have played an important role in the study of human life sciences. At the same time, metabolomics came into being and developed rapidly since mid-1990s. Together with genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics, it constitutes systems biology. Genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics have played indispensable roles in the field of life sciences. They are studied from different levels of regulating life processes, so that people can study life phenomena at the molecular level, explore the nature of life, and gradually and systematically understand the law of life development. These methods, together with bioinformatics, have become an important part of systemic biology. Metabolomics studies all metabolic responses of individuals to stimuli, environmental changes, and genetic modifications of exogenous substances (drugs or poisons), and examines the overall picture and dynamic changes of these responses. Metabolomics provides powerful modern experimental techniques for the development of life sciences, as well as new technical support and guarantee for the preclinical safety evaluation and practice of new drugs. The emergence of metabolomics makes up for the shortcomings of microstudies such as genomics and proteomics. With the improvement in analytical methods and data analysis, all the information about the organism obtained by metabolomics will be comprehensively interpreted. Through the analysis of this large amount of information, it was found that the biomarkers related to drugs or clinics were metabolites. It is believed that metabolomics play an increasingly important role in clinical practice and new drug development.