Metabolomics 2

Question 1

What is metabolomics?

Answer 1

the comprehensive identification and quantification of all metabolites with a biological system

Question 2

What are the applications of metabolomics?

Answer 2

biomarker discovery
drug discovery and development
environmental variation
genetic variation

Question 3

What does metabolomics help us with?

Answer 3

drug mechanism
response to treatment
drug toxicity

Question 4

What is pharmacometabolomics?

Answer 4

understanding patients response to therapy from a metabolism perspective
-comparing metabolic signature before and after drug exposure

Question 5

How is metabolomics characterized?

Answer 5

by its high dynamic flux

Question 6

Why do we study metabolomics?

Answer 6

changes in metabolites concentrations in response to stimulus occur within seconds
changes at the metabolite level often appear in biological fluids before the appearance of clinical symptoms

Question 7

What is the ultimate goal of metabolomics?

Answer 7

providing valuable diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers that can be routinely detected/quantified in typical clinical settings

Question 8

What are some technologies in metabolomics?

Answer 8

NMR
mass spectrometry
-LC MS
-GC MS

Question 9

What are the challenges in metabolomics?

Answer 9

diverse classes of low molecular weight compounds
exist in very wide concentration ranges
affected by genetic and environmental stimuli
not specific to a single metabolic pathway
heterogenous physicochemical properties

Question 10

What are the advantages and disadvantages of blood?

Answer 10

advantages:
-easy to collect
-instant reflection of metabolome
disadvantages:
-complex
-high protein content
-needs extraction

Question 11

What are the advantages and disadvantages of urine?

Answer 11

advantages:
-non invasive
-low infection risk to researchers
-normalization techniques available
disadvantages:
-high salt content
-affected by age, gender, day, food

Question 12

What are the advantages and disadvantages of saliva?

Answer 12

advantages:
-non invasive
disadvantages:
-low concentration
-no established assays

Question 13

What are the advantages and disadvantages of CSF?

Answer 13

advantages:
-convenient to investigate neurological diseases
disadvantages:
-invasive
-low volumes

Question 14

What are the advantages and disadvantages of exhaled breath condensate?

Answer 14

advantages:
-non invasive
-contains volatile metabolites
disadvantages:
-low concentration
-no normalization techniques
-affected by alcohol, smoking, exercise

Question 15

What are advantages and disadvantages of tissue?

Answer 15

advantages:
-real reflection of the diseased organ
disadvantages:
-invasive

Question 16

Which matrix is not a good candidate for proteomics?

Answer 16

urine
breath condensate

Question 17

Describe HMDB.

Answer 17

detailed information of small molecule metabolites found in human body
-chemical, clinical, molecular biology/biochemistry data
contains 220,945 metabolite entries
-water soluble and lipid soluble metabolites
-metabolites that would be regarded as either abundant or relatively rare
-8,610 protein sequences are linked to these metabolite entries

Question 18

Describe the bridging of the gap between genotype and phenotype.

Answer 18

not all changes in genome or transcriptome cause abnormality or disease
not all enzymes and protein products detected by proteomics are functional
environmental factors at later stages are not considered genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics

Question 19

What are metabolites?

Answer 19

final result of cellular functions
quantifiable molecules with the closest link to phenotype

Question 20

What is metabolite target analysis?

Answer 20

quantitative or semi-quantitative clinical and pharmaceutical analysis of a specific group of metabolites