Metabolomics: Understanding Metabolism in the 21st Century

Metabolomics is an emerging field that aims to measure the complement of metabolites (the intermediates and products of metabolism) in living organisms. The complement of metabolites in a biological system is known as the metabolome and represents the downstream effect of an organism’s genome and its interaction with the environment. Metabolomics has a wide application area across the medical and biological sciences and is attractive to both new and established scientists. In this course we will provide an introduction to metabolomics, explain why we want to study the metabolome and describe the current challenges in analysing the complement of metabolites in a biological system. We will describe the interdisciplinary approaches adopted in the metabolomics workflow and demonstrate how the combined efforts of scientist’s from different disciplines is advancing this exciting field. By the end of the course the learner will understand how metabolomics can revolutionise our understanding of metabolism. The course will be targeted towards final year undergraduate students from biology / chemical disciplines and medical students, but will also provide a valuable introduction to the metabolomics field for MSc and PhD students, and scientists at any stage in their careers. Metabolomics is a new tool to the scientific community and has widespread applications across the medical and biological sciences in academia and industry.