Systems Biology (Methods in Molecular Biology)

Chapter 16

Metabolomics: Challenges and Opportunities in Systems

Biology Studies

Luca Casadei, Mariacristina Valerio, and Cesare Manetti

Abstract

Metabolomics has the capability of providing predisposition, diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic
biomarker profiles of individual patients, since a large number of metabolites can be measured in an
unbiased manner from biological samples. In this setting,^1 H-Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR)
spectroscopy of biofluids such as plasma, urine, and fecal water offers the opportunity to identify patterns
of biomarker changes that reflects the physiological or pathological status of an individual patient.
In this chapter, we show as a metabolomics study can be used to diagnose a disease, classifying patients as
healthy or as pathological taking into account individual variability.

Key wordsPrecision medicine, Metabolomics, NMR spectroscopy, Principal component analysis,

Linear discriminant analysis, Covariance analysis

Abbreviation

λ g-Log transformation parameter

CF Cystic fibrosis

FID Free induction decay

g-log Generalized log

JRES 2D^1 H J-resolved

LDA Linear discriminant analysis

NaN3 Sodium azide

NMR Nuclear magnetic resonance

PC Principal component

PI Pancreatic insufficiency

p-JRES Proton-decoupled skyline projections

PQN Probabilistic quotient normalization

TSP Sodium salt of 3-(trimethylsilyl) propionic-2,2,3,3-d 4 acid,

98 atom % D

Mariano Bizzarri (ed.),Systems Biology, Methods in Molecular Biology, vol. 1702,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-7456-6_16,©Springer Science+Business Media LLC 2018

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