title: Advantages and Pitfalls of Mass Spectrometry Based Metabolome Profiling in Systems Biology.
abstract: Mass spectrometry-based metabolome profiling became the method of choice in systems biology approaches and aims to enhance biological understanding of complex biological systems. Genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics are well established technologies and are commonly used by many scientists. In comparison, metabolomics is an emerging field and has not reached such high-throughput, routine and coverage than other omics technologies. Nevertheless, substantial improvements were achieved during the last years. Integrated data derived from multi-omics approaches will provide a deeper understanding of entire biological systems. Metabolome profiling is mainly hampered by its diversity, variation of metabolite concentration by several orders of magnitude and biological data interpretation. Thus, multiple approaches are required to cover most of the metabolites. No software tool is capable of comprehensively translating all the data into a biologically meaningful context yet. In this review, we discuss the advantages of metabolome profiling and main obstacles limiting progress in systems biology.
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, Ihnestraße 63-73, 14195 Berlin, Germany. gielisch@molgen.mpg.de.
authors.forename: Ina
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Aretz
authors.affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, Ihnestraße 63-73, 14195 Berlin, Germany. meierhof@molgen.mpg.de.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Meierhofer
mesh_terms: D002851:Chromatography, High Pressure Liquid; D016208:Databases, Factual; D008401:Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry; D009682:Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy; D013058:Mass Spectrometry / Q000592:standards; D055442:Metabolome; D055432:Metabolomics; D049490:Systems Biology
keywords: LC-MS; derivatization; mass spectrometry; metabolome profiling; multiple reaction monitoring (MRM); nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy; systems biology