Metabolomics Research Introduction, Applications, Sample Types and Handling

What is metabolomics research?

Biological systems such as cell cultures, tissues, organs, and entire organisms produce, transform, and consume small molecules (< 1500 Da). These small molecules or metabolites perform functions or tasks necessary for cell growth, defense, inhibition, and stimulation. As a result, small molecular omics analysis is a powerful approach in discovering and understanding an organism's functions and responses. In these analyses, we typically observe 1) endogenous metabolites (produced by the organism itself; e.g. fatty acids, organic acids, sugars, vitamins) and 2) exogenous metabolites (external from the organism; e.g. drugs, environmental toxicants).

One goal of metabolomics-based analyses is to identify (global untargeted analysis) and quantify (targeted analysis) metabolites. As such the metabolomics community has already developed several small molecule-based databases of identified metabolite entries for several organisms (e.g. humans, lifestock, yeast), pathways, diseases, and drugs.

What research can metabolomics advance?

Mass spectrometry (MS) allows us to capture and analyze the complex array of small molecule metabolites within a biological sample. While global untargeted metabolomics enables in-depth analysis of complex, measurable sample analytes (incl. chemical unknowns), targeted metabolomics allows for the quantification of known metabolites.

As a result, global untargeted metabolomics is used as a hypothesis-generating discovery application, while targeted metabolomics is hypothesis-driven and generally used to provide absolute quantification and validation of specific metabolites of interest or metabolic pathways.

Global Untargeted and Targeted Metabolomics

Biological systems are highly dynamic and their cellular products are influenced by a variety of factors such as genes, age, nutrition, lifestyle, diseases, drugs, and the environment. Metabolomics research is a valuable tool to characterize intra- and inter-cellular, dynamic molecular changes in a multitude of applications such as metabolism of drugs or environmental toxicants and discovery and validation of disease biomarkers. Read more about interactions of microbe and host metabolism.

What types of samples can be analyzed and how should they be handled?

The CIT has established high standards for materials quality, standard operating procedures, and instrument reproducibility controls. Further, the Center has established quality control procedures to assess instrument and sample handling acceptance, as well as established quality assurance procedures in accordance with stringent federal guidelines (e.g., EPA Quality Assurance Project Plans).

Please view the Client-Guide for Handling and Storage of Samples prior to submission to the CIT.

The CIT’s sample preparation procedures are optimized based on the sample source (e.g. plasma, serum, tissue, cultured cells, or bioreactor effluent), sample type (intra-cellular vs. extra-cellular metabolomics studies), and sample amount available.