Metabolomics is a rapidly growing field that offers significant opportunities for the enhanced understanding of fundamental biochemistry and functional genomics. Further, metabolomics is the final frontier and culminating endpoint of the "omics" sciences (i.e., genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics) that offers substantial opportunities for biomarker discovery, personalized medicine, predictive medicine, and unknown gene function determination.

“The new knowledge gained from metabolomics can be used to improve the quality of life, it may help to increase crop performance, and may help us improve our health.”

Because of these opportunities, there is substantial interest from a large number of biological disciplines—microbial, plant, animal, and human research. In this article, we describe the benefits and current status of metabolomics, but also suggest areas which could be improved so that the full benefits of metabolomics are realized. We believe this article to be one of the earliest discussions on these topics.

The assessment of metabolites is not new; however the substantial increase in the scale and the numbers of metabolites that are now being quantitatively and qualitatively profiled represents a dramatic improvement and an overall shift in paradigm. This paradigm shift towards a more comprehensive or global assessment of metabolism and biology is new.

Metabolomics is applicable to every biological system that one can envision. Most organisms have significant similarity in primary metabolism which can be assessed on a large scale by using metabolomics.

For example, glucose is glucose whether it is profiled in humans or bacteria, thus the metabolomics technology can be applied to both. Further, metabolomics can also address the specialized biochemistry of organisms such as plant or microbial natural products, but this often involves additional experimentation in aggregate with those used for primary metabolism.

Metabolites are the essential chemical components of all living organisms. In plants, metabolites determine such attributes as the color of leaves, the scent of flowers, the taste of fruits and responses to environmental conditions.

In humans, metabolites reflect our metabolism which changes when we are sick or exercising. We believe that the large-scale assessment of these metabolites (metabolomics) offers numerous advantages and opportunities for a better fundamental understanding of how organisms function and how such function interplays with biochemistry and physiology.

The new knowledge gained from metabolomics can be used to improve the quality of life, it may help to increase crop performance, and may help us improve our health.

Our interest in metabolomics comes from the desire to better understand the fundamental biochemistry of plants and to use this information for plant improvements. However, the views of various metabolomics groups on how best to achieve this goal are not always aligned.

Thus, we believed it timely to initiate discussions on the needs to increase the depth of coverage, standardization of methods, and integration of data. Although most acknowledge the need, we are still working on an agreeable solution.

This initiative has prompted a larger effort known as the Metabolomics Standardization Initiative (MSI) supported by the Metabolomics Society and NIH.

Metabolomics has the potential to yield fundamental biochemical information and new discoveries that can be exploited to improve the productivity and nutritional content of forage and crop plants which will help feed the world’s expanding population.

Further, the new information can be used to exploit plants as biofactories for the production of nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals, vaccines, biofuels, and chemical stocks. Metabolomics can be used for gene discovery, biomarker discovery, and diagnosis of disease, personalized medicine, and predictive medicine. Thus, the social implications are substantial.

Raoul J. Bino, Ph. D.
Professor Plant Metabolomics
General Director 
Plant Sciences Group 
Wageningen University and Research Center 
Wageningen, The Netherlands 

Lloyd W. Sumner, Ph.D. 
Associate Professor
Plant Biology Division
The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation
Ardmore, OK, USA

Related Links:
•	Metabolomics Standardization Initiative
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