Metabolomics in food and nutrition

Metabolomics has emerged as a science with the capacity to cause a major
paradigm shift in the way we approach all aspects of public health, including
nutrition, agriculture, and food production. Metabolomics biochemically describes
the total metabolism and metabolic interactions of cells, organisms, and
communities of organisms, to provide a framework on which to understand
cellular and organism function in a given environment. Incorporating metabolomics
into systems biology will allow a comprehensive understanding of the breadth of
health and disease by linking genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and
metabolomics at the organism and/or community level. This system- level
knowledge will be key to understanding the network and the communication
within the metabolic network that leads to overall health or disease. Moreover,
clarifying how the genome and transcriptome are ultimately related to the end
products of metabolism will enable a better assessment of the impact of
environment, pathogens, and genetic modifi cation on the nutritional and sensory
qualities of food. The goal of this book is to provide a working knowledge of
metabolomics in health and agriculture to researchers, students, and policy makers
by fi rst outlining the technology in detail, and how the wealth of information
generated is used to gain meaningful information. Secondly, this book provides
several chapters on how this type of research is being used in laboratories and
industries to solve important problems, and where this research will lead in the
future. This book will provide an invaluable reference tool on techniques and
methods in metabolomics, allowing the reader a greater understanding of this
rapidly expanding fi eld.