Metabolomics examines the whole metabolism, which ultimately reflects the behaviour of different patterns of genes. It is sometimes spelt metabonomics, but these are essentially the same thing.

Metabolomics is making great advances in this complex approach to nutrition research. This is partly because nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and mass spectroscopy (MS) are established techniques, but also because the application of pattern-recognition statistics, such as principle component analysis, is conventional in this field.

Metabol/nomics also has the advantages of offering more immediate information about our metabolism, which is not presented by changes in gene transcription or protein expression since both can occur without apparent metabolic consequences.

Publications

• Lenz et al. J. Pharm. Biomed. Anal. 2003 33:1103-15 (intra-/ inter-individual variation)
• Wang et al. J. Agric. Food Chem. 2005 53:191-6 (camomile tea study)
  

Global nutritional metabolomics initiative (launched Japan, June 2005)

• Defining the nutritional metabolome
• Measuring the nutritional metabolome
• Application of metabolomics to human nutrition
• Curating metabolomic databases