Click to view entire schema
Metabonomics, also often referred to as Metabolomics, is defined as the study of endogenous, non-protein metabolites (= Metabolome, metabolic profile) present in an organism and the changes on this system. Together with toxicogenomics and toxicoproteomics it is part of systems toxicology, the study of interactions between the components of a biological system and the effects on function and behaviour of that system caused by a toxic compound.
Within the PredTox consortium, the task of the metabonomics workpackage is to analyse the changes on the metabolic profile of blood and urine from rats induced by 16 model toxicants. The goal is that these analyses will help to better understand the mechanisms of toxicity and to identify novel biomarkers of toxicity.
The analysis is performed with the two technologies NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance) spectroscopy and LC/MS-TOF (liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry-time of flight). All of these analyses are performed by the different consortium companies (Boehringer Ingelheim, Lilly, Novartis, Novo Nordisc, Organon, Sanofi-Aventis, Schering, Servier and Waters) and raw data for statistical analysis is transferred to Genedata.
