Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.
Department of Chemistry, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.
Nat Metab. 2021 Jul;3(7):896-908. doi: 10.1038/s42255-021-00419-2. Epub 2021 Jul 1.
Altered metabolic activity contributes to the pathogenesis of a number of diseases, including diabetes, heart failure, cancer, fibrosis and neurodegeneration. These diseases, and organismal metabolism more generally, are only partially recapitulated by cell culture models. Accordingly, it is important to measure metabolism in vivo. Over the past century, researchers studying glucose homeostasis have developed strategies for the measurement of tissue-specific and whole-body metabolic activity (pathway fluxes). The power of these strategies has been augmented by recent advances in metabolomics technologies. Here, we review techniques for measuring metabolic fluxes in intact mammals and discuss how to analyse and interpret the results. In tandem, we describe important findings from these techniques, and suggest promising avenues for their future application. Given the broad importance of metabolism to health and disease, more widespread application of these methods holds the potential to accelerate biomedical progress.
改变的代谢活性有助于许多疾病的发病机制，包括糖尿病、心力衰竭、癌症、纤维化和神经退行性变。这些疾病，以及更一般的生物体代谢，仅部分由细胞培养模型再现。因此，测量体内代谢很重要。在过去的一个世纪里，研究葡萄糖稳态的研究人员已经开发出了用于测量组织特异性和全身代谢活性（途径通量）的策略。最近代谢组学技术的进步增强了这些策略的力量。在这里，我们回顾了用于测量完整哺乳动物代谢通量的技术，并讨论了如何分析和解释结果。同时，我们描述了这些技术的重要发现，并为它们的未来应用提出了有前途的途径。鉴于代谢对健康和疾病的广泛重要性，这些方法的更广泛应用有可能加速生物医学的进步。
