Metabolomics: understanding metabolism in the 21st Century

Metabolomics is the large-scale study of all the metabolites in a biological system. Metabolites are small molecular weight compounds which participate in the metabolic reactions required for growth, maintenance and general function within cells, biofluids, tissues and organisms.

The field of metabolomics combines strategies from analytical chemistry, and bioinformatics and statistical analysis to measure the thousands of metabolites in a samples and extract information from the complex data.

The term ‘metabolome’ was first used in the scientific literature in September 1998 and along with the other ‘omics approaches (genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics) provides an important tool to understand biological systems and how they respond to genetic perturbations and environmental stimuli.

To introduce you to the metabolomic and the research performed at the University of Birmingham Professor Mark Viant welcomes you to the course.

If you are unsure that your background knowledge is sufficient we recommend the following articles to introduce you to metabolomics and maximize your learning experience. We also provide a Glossary in step 1.5.

What is metabolomics all about?

The metabolome 18 years on: a concept comes of age

Metabolomics: what’s happening downstream of DNA

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