Plant, Food and Nutritional Metabolomics

Dear Colleagues,

Metabolomics, metabonomics, metabolic profiling, or metabolic phenotyping continues to be a highly dynamic and important line of research in the biological sciences. Nowadays, metabolomics studies have provided valuable information for a better understanding of the complex action of biological systems, becoming in a few years an essential tool of primary choice to undertake research focused on cellular metabolism and its physiological implications.

A metabolomics study requires the support of analytical platforms that provide information on the systematic identification and quantification of specialized metabolites, mainly from the various metabolic pathways that occur at the corresponding levels in systems biology.

The main analytical platforms for metabolomics studies are Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and double or triple hyphenated-Mass Spectrometry as well as, to a lesser extent, infrared or ultraviolet. Altogether, these analytical tools have found in metabolomics a wide and fertile field of applications that have motivated the development of new techniques associated with technological innovations and bioinformatic packages that greatly facilitate the analysis of samples in an untargeted and targeted context.

Multivariate and univariate tools, including linear and non-linear methods, are normally used to analyze data sets collected by any analytical platform used in metabolomics. These chemometric tools allow to extract information from spectroscopic data with biological meaning to better understand the model under study.

Metabolic profiling makes it possible to elucidate at molecular level any link between diet and disease risk in the context of a superorganism in which the gut microbiota plays a pivotal role in health and disease. In this sense, some foods or food supplements may influence the gut microbiota, such as probiotics, prebiotics, symbiotics, and postbiotics. In the specific case of diet, it is possible to relate its biomarkers with health risk, which could also include co-metabolites and/or metabolites produced by the gut microbiota alone.

When studying the beneficial effect of traditional medicine, nutraceuticals or any dietary intervention in nutritional and epidemiological protocols, it is possible to discover the molecule, or combination of molecules, derived from these sources that produce therapeutic effects on a given disease. The final purpose of metabolic profiling is to translate this knowledge into clinical practice in order to recommend a properly stratified patient to take a personalized treatment, and thus monitor adherence, efficacy and effectiveness.  

Metabolic profiling allows to explore biomarkers generated by the intake of a specific natural product, food and/or a complete diet, and to relate them with a beneficial effect. It is suggested to first include healthy models or participants, and then patients or models targeting a specific disease or biological activity. In this way, the aim is to unveil the biomarkers or pathways affected by such intake per se, to confirm whether they are related to the therapeutic effect or not.

The strongly multidisciplinary nature of metabolomics has achieved the convergence of several areas of knowledge focused on the interrogation of biological systems with the aim of understanding their integral functioning and their sensitive environmental interactions. The emergence of new metabolomics protocols has broadened their applications in all areas of knowledge related to the great cascade of biochemical events that define the state of any biological system. Through this approach it is possible to obtain an accurate biological interpretation, allowing a deeper understanding of the biological model under study. Thus, metabolomics studies are currently having a great impact not only in research focused on human health, but also in cellular, animal and plant research.

In this regard, this Special Issue welcomes clinical and non-clinical studies performing an untargeted or targeted approach using ex vivo, in vivo, or in vitro models targeting communicable or noncommunicable diseases, where any treatment using natural products, drugs, food or diet prove to be beneficial. Natural products used in traditional and complementary medicine are advised, including a broad range of sources such as microbes, plants, fungus, insects, algae, marine, etc. This Issue also aims to cover studies on the health of livestock, poultry, plants and crops, including genetic modification, as well as those related to environmental and human health effects, and agricultural and biotechnological sectors.

Dr. L. Gerardo Zepeda Vallejo
Dr. José Iván Serrano-Contreras
Guest Editors

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