Metabolome in Health and Disease

Metabolites are key regulators of systems homeostasis. As such, changes in concentrations and fluxes of specific groups of metabolites may reflect systemic responses to environmental, lifestyle, and therapeutic challenges. Thus, the study of metabolites is a powerful tool for the characterization of complex phenotypes as well as for the development of biomarkers for specific physiological responses. Specific metabolic profiles may prove diagnostic for sub-phenotyping of heterogeneous diseases, which will be an important component of stratified medicine approaches. Metabolomics has been proposed as a useful platform for providing a snapshot of an individual phenotype under a certain set of temporal and spacial conditions. Therefore, metabolomics is a key platform to study human health and disease.
This Research Topic will cover the studies aimed at elucidating metabolic pathways underlying different diseases/phenotypes, primarily by using metabolomics. Since metabolism is highly dynamic, the Research Topic will cover the studies aimed at elucidating dynamic responses of systemic metabolism to specific expernal challenges in health and disease. Studies proposing novel methodologies or approaches to address multiple challenges in the field of metabolomics will be highlighted, including breadth of metabolic coverage, accuracy of metabolite annotation, database generation and curation, legacy data archiving and analysis, speed of analysis, and robustness for large-scale phenotyping studies. These components are considered vital for the continued growth of metabolomics science. The emphasis will also be on the coverage of the studies introducting the innovative approaches to study human metabolism at the systems level, such as by the genome-scale metabolic modelling.