ABSTRACT
To understand fully the impact of genetic modifications and toxicological interventions, global profiling tools are required to understand their consequences on the network of transcripts, proteins, and metabolites found within a cell, tissue, or organism. Metabonomics/metabolomics is one such technique used to globally profile the metabolite complement of a cell, tissue, or organism using either high-
resolution 1H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy or mass spectrometry (MS) in conjunction with statistical pattern recognition. Unlike other functional genomic tools, the approach is both high throughput and relatively cheap on a per sample basis. This chapter examines analytical advances in NMR spectroscopy, MS, and pattern recognition that have aided the development of this field, including highresolution magic angle spinning NMR spectroscopy, cryogenically cooled NMR probes, high-throughput systems, and liquid chromatography MS. These advances have allowed metabonomic approaches to distinguish genetically modified yeast strains, distinguish both disease presence and severity in coronary heart disease, and build predictive models of drug toxicity. These techniques are also being used to data-mine other “-omic” technologies, including transcriptomics and proteomics.
