Metabonomics and its applications

Metabonomics is characterized as the quantification measurement of the metabolic responses of living system to stimuli or genetic modification and is a subgroup of metabolomics. Metabonomics has particular emphasis on elucidation of differences in population groups due to environmental stress, disease and genetic alterations. It is being integrated with genomics and proteomics in order to create a new system biology and fully cognizant relationships of metabolome, proteome and genome. Metabonomics and Metabolomics encompass the comprehensive and simultaneous systematic profiling of multiple metabolite concentrations and their cellular and systemic fluctuations in response to drugs, diet, lifestyle, environment and genetic modulations, in order to characterize the beneficial and adverse effects of such interactions. This field of science is a powerful approach for biomarker discovery and as a functional genomic tool, it is important to differentiate unwitting’ consequences of the genetic engineering process from the witting; or interpretation of the function of particular genes or gene classes when the cell system or organism is examined for the physical effects of the intervention. This review will discuss different aspects of metabonomics and its application.