Microbial metabolomics has received extensive attention in recent years, mainly because it supports and supplements various microbial research fields from new drug development to metabolic engineering. With the help of advanced instruments and the latest multivariate data analysis, metabolomics aims to identify biomarkers, clarify the mode of action, and characterize products and processes. The metabolomics solutions of LC-MS, GC-MS and NMR fully meet the requirements of integrated metabolic spectrum analysis, sample throughput, compound identification, verification and quantification. In order to obtain metabolome data representing the physiological state of microorganisms, validated protocols and analyses are essential. Metabolomics has become an indispensable part of microbial research. In recent years, the study of microbial physiology through metabolomics methods has received more and more attention.
In the past 37 years, great progress has been made in microbial metabolomics. However, it is clear that there does not seem to be a universal method in microbial metabolomics that can be used to instantaneously terminate the metabolic activity of microorganisms, extract all low molecular weight metabolites, and analyze these target metabolites. The high degree of chemical diversity (such as the inherent polar and non-polar properties of low molecular weight metabolites) exacerbates this challenge.
Obviously, the current methods also seem to be strongly dependent on organism/specificity, so the quantitative metabolomics development methods in prokaryotes (such as bacteria) cannot be directly transferred to eukaryotes (such as yeast or filamentous) without optimization. The main problem still to be solved is the leakage of intracellular metabolites into the surrounding medium during the quenching step, especially in prokaryotes. Therefore, leak testing is essential when developing quenching protocols to accurately quantify metabolites.
The extraction protocol also has similar arguments, because the loss of metabolites needs to be determined and corrected during the extraction step, or a labeled internal standard must be used to correct for possible metabolite losses. The latter procedure, labeled internal standard, has been successfully used in Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Penicillium chrysogenum. In addition, considering the wide differences in the inherent chemical and physical properties of the metabolites that constitute the metabolome of microorganisms, it seems unimaginable to design a method that can separate all metabolites.
Therefore, it seems more practical to develop technologies that are dedicated to and target classes of metabolites, namely sugar intermediates, organic acids, amino acids and cofactors. The establishment of a metabolomics database containing accurately measured metabolite concentrations under given standard culture conditions can be used as a reference guide and position metabolomics as an essential part of microbial research and technology.
The non-targeted metabolomics approach aims to study known and unknown metabolites. Identify all detectable metabolites to analyze the overall metabolic characteristics and discover the metabolic mechanism behind the phenomenon. Non-targeted metabolomics is a powerful tool for large-scale early diagnosis and discovery of new biomarkers. By using technologies capable of detecting multiple metabolites, non-target metabolomics analysis can quickly overview the metabolic profile of the sample. Microbiosci performs non-target metabolomics research for partners in the pharmaceutical and academic research fields, which includes work across disease indications, from in vitro models to clinical studies.
The metabolome is the final functional product of the genome, which can be studied by identifying and quantifying metabolic compounds. Targeted metabolomics analysis at the pathway and organism level can provide functional information for pathway and host engineering research. However, the main disadvantage of the targeted approach is the limited coverage of the metabolome, which increases the risk of ignoring related metabolomics reactions. Microbiosci is a leading institution for professional and comprehensive targeted metabolomics research for partners in the pharmaceutical and academic research fields.
