How Metabolomics is Uncovering a Greater Understanding of Cardiometabolic Diseases

Metabolomics is the comprehensive profiling of small molecule metabolites (the metabolome) in cells, tissues or whole organisms and can be thought of as a technology that can be applied to study all of metabolism at the same time. The metabolome is organized into metabolic pathways that intersect and interact with further pathways to form complex metabolic networks. A striking feature of metabolism, unlike many other areas of biology, is the similarity of the basic metabolic pathways, such as the citric acid cycle, across very different species from unicellular bacteria through to large mammals. This demonstrates the fundamental importance of these metabolic pathways to basic biology. Therefore, the systematic and accurate identification of metabolites in a living system and their interpretation are essential ingredients to deciphering these systems.

This is arguably even more important in complex traits such as cardiometabolic disease. In this presentation, we describe how our approach is being successfully applied to cardiometabolic disease research. Through the systematic, accurate identification of large numbers of metabolites, along with their bioinformatic analyses, numerous cardiometabolic traits are being illuminated.

Learning Objectives

• Understand the fundamentals of metabolomics
• Why you should take a global approach to metabolomics
• Uncovering the interconnection between factors such as genetics, diet, obesity, the microbiome and metabolome on cardiometabolic disease development