Seeger Karsten
Institute of Chemistry, University of Lübeck, Ratzeburger Allee 160, 23538 Lübeck, Germany.
Curr Drug Discov Technol. 2009 Dec;6(4):256-61. doi: 10.2174/157016309789869074.
Metabolomics is a recently emerging member of the "omics" technologies. It aims at detecting and quantifying all detectable small molecules, the so-called metabolites, present in a biological sample. Because of the lower number of metabolites compared with the number of genes and proteins identified in genomics and proteomics approaches, data of metabolic studies are less complex and may therefore be more informative. Metabolomics may thus significantly contribute to our understanding of disease mechanisms. Autoimmune diseases are of growing clinical relevance, and due to the chronic nature of these diseases successful treatment is often challenging. In the past years, a variety of studies have been published about the metabolome of autoimmune diseases such as Crohn's disease and rheumatoid arthritis. However, our understanding of the role of different metabolites in the pathogenesis of autoimmune diseases is still far from being complete.
代谢组学是“组学”技术中最近兴起的成员。它旨在检测和定量生物样本中所有可检测到的小分子，即所谓的代谢物。由于与基因组学和蛋白质组学方法中鉴定的基因和蛋白质数量相比，代谢物数量较少，代谢研究的数据不太复杂，因此可能更具信息性。代谢组学因此可能对我们理解疾病机制有重大贡献。自身免疫性疾病的临床相关性日益增加，由于这些疾病的慢性性质，成功治疗往往具有挑战性。在过去几年中，已经发表了关于克罗恩病和类风湿关节炎等自身免疫性疾病代谢组的各种研究。然而，我们对不同代谢物在自身免疫性疾病发病机制中的作用的理解仍然远远不够完整。
