A step toward systems metabolomics

while levels of genes and proteins provide information on a cell's possibilities, the levels of metabolic intermediates provide a very direct indication of a cell's current activities. Methods to monitor the levels of metabolites as well as the dynamic flux through metabolic pathways can be integrated to generate a systems-level understanding of the metabolic activity in a cell at a given time. Nemutlu et al. (5a) describe a new methodology for metabolomic analysis that provides dynamic and systems-level information on phosphate transfer rates that can be used to understand the integration of multiple cellular signaling pathways in normal, genetically altered and diseased tissue.