Metabolomics technology and bioinformatics.
Vladimir Shulaev 1
1Va Bioinformatics Inst., Blacksburg, VA
Metabolomics is the global analysis of all or a large number of cellular metabolites. Like other functional genomics research, metabolomics generates large amounts of data. Handling, processing and analysis of this data is a clear challenge and requires specialized mathematical, statistical and bioinformatics tools. Metabolomics needs for bioinformatics span through data and information management, raw analytical data processing, metabolomics standards and ontology, statistical analysis and data mining, data integration, and mathematical modeling of metabolic networks within a framework of systems biology. The major approaches in metabolomics, along with the modern analytical tools used for data generation and analysis will be discussed.