Metabolomics or metabolite profiles?

摘要

'Metabolomics' or 'metabolome analysis' is a term that is now widely used in the scientific community, but its meaning is not always clear. What exactly do people mean when they refer to metabolomics? The new phase of genome analysis, known as functional genomics, has resulted in a new era of neologism where terms for domains of investigation are combined with the suffix 'omics' to indicate a new scientific approach. Functional genomics refers specifically to the development and application of global (genome-wide or system-wide) experimental approaches to assess gene function, making use of the information provided by genome sequencing. As a consequence of functional genomics, a plethora of new 'omics' such as transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics (sometimes referred to as metabonomics), pharmacoge-nomics, fluxomics, physiomics and many others are upon us. In particular, the term 'metabolomics' has been widely used and misused.