Coverage of the metabolome

The metabolome is a complex and dynamic system and it is challenging to measure all of the metabolites in the metabolome.

The objective of an untargeted metabolomics experiment is to measure all of the metabolites in a biological sample. This is very difficult to do and so the experiments are designed to detect as many metabolites as possible. As we start to introduce the analytical approached we use in metabolomics, Dr Catherine Winder describes the challenges that are encountered when measuring the metabolome and the approaches that may be applied.