YMDB or the Yeast Metabolome Database (http://www.ymdb.ca/) is a comprehensive database containing extensive information on the genome and metabolome of Saccharomyces cerevisiae Initially released in 2012, the YMDB has gone through a significant expansion and a number of improvements over the past 4 years. This manuscript describes the most recent version of YMDB (YMDB 2.0). More specifically, ...

While metabolomics has tremendous potential for diagnostic biomarker and therapeutic target discovery, its utility may be diminished by the variability that occurs due to environmental exposures including diet and the influences of the human circadian rhythm. For successful translation of metabolomics findings into the clinical setting, it is necessary to exhaustively define the sources of meta...

Differences in genetic background and/or environmental exposure among individuals are expected to give rise to differences in measurable characteristics, or phenotypes. Consequently, genetic resemblance and similarities in environment should manifest as similarities in phenotypes. The metabolome reflects many of the system properties, and is therefore an important part of the phenotype. Neverth...

Childhood obesity is a major worldwide health problem. Intervention programs to ameliorate the rate of obesity have been designed and implemented; yet the epidemic has no end near in sight. AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) has become one of the most important key elements in energy control, appetite regulation, myogenesis, adipocyte differentiation, and cellular stress management. Obesity is...

The Human Metabolome Database (HMDB) is currently the most complete and comprehensive curated collection of human metabolite and human metabolism data in the world. It contains records for more than 2180 endogenous metabolites with information gathered from thousands of books, journal articles and electronic databases. In addition to its comprehensive literature-derived data, the HMDB also cont...

Liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry (LC-MS) has emerged as one of the most widely used platforms for untargeted metabolomics due to its unparalleled sensitivity and metabolite coverage. Despite its prevalence of use, the proportion of true metabolites identified in a given experiment compared to background contaminants and ionization-generated artefacts remains poorly unders...

The Human Metabolome Database or HMDB (www.hmdb.ca) is a web-enabled metabolomic database containing comprehensive information about human metabolites along with their biological roles, physiological concentrations, disease associations, chemical reactions, metabolic pathways, and reference spectra. First described in 2007, the HMDB is now considered the standard metabolomic resource for human ...

Previous studies have reported crop toxicity of zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO-NPs) by root exposure and that silica (SiO2-NPs) modulate growth soil physicochemical properties. In this study, we determined the effects foliar to ZnO-NPs SiO2-NPs on metabolomic profile cucumber seedlings. Foliar spraying with improved plant performance, as indicated increases in chlorophyll contents, fluorescence ...

The global study of the structure and dynamics of metabolic networks has been hindered by a lack of techniques that identify metabolites and their biochemical relationship in complex mixtures. The recent application of Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FTICR-MS) to metabolomic analysis suggests a way to tackle the problem. A lower-cost alternative to high-field FTICR-...

Metabolic profiling applied to functional genomics (metabolomics) is in an early stage of development. Here, the technologies used for metabolite profiling are briefly covered, illustrated by a few pioneering studies. Issues related to bioinformatics, namely data analysis, visualisation and archival, are the main focus of this review. Arguably there is already a need for databases containing me...