Bioinformatics for Metabolomics

Metabolomics has become an important phenotyping technique for molecular biology and medicine. It assesses the molecular state of an organism or collections of organisms through the comprehensive quantitative and qualitative analysis of all small molecules in cells, tissues, and body fluids. Metabolic processes are at the core of physiology and... read moreconsequently metabolomics is ideally suited as a medical tool to characterize disease states in organisms. Metabolomics is also a useful way to assess organisms for their suitability in, for example, renewable energy production or for biotechnological applications in general. In addition, the application of metabolomics in environmental science, toxicology, food and the medical industry is well established, documented and growing. Metabolomics studies generate large amounts of analytical data (Giga- to Terabytes depending on the size of the study) and therefore impose significant challenges for biomedical and life science bioinformatics to cope with such data volumes and ensure that the data is captured, stored and disseminated based on open and widely accepted community standards.

This lecture series provides an introduction to metabolomics data analysis using bioinformatics tools. In order to ensure that experiments are run in a way that enables subsequent data analysis, we also address metabolomics study design, introduce existing information standards in metabolomics and explain how data needs to be organized for successful analysis.