Course Overview

Metabolomics is an emerging field that aims to measure the complement of metabolites (the metabolome) in living organisms. The metabolome represents the downstream effect of an organism’s genome and its interaction with the environment. Metabolomics has a wide application area across the medical and biological sciences. The course provides an introduction to metabolomics, describes the tools and techniques we use to study the metabolome and explains why we want to study it. By the end of the course you will understand how metabolomics can revolutionise our understanding of metabolism.

This course is designed as a 4-week course and the Educators will support discussions and learning in weeks 1 to 4 responding to questions and comments. The course will remain open for 12 weeks in total; if you join the course after week 5 we encourage you to read posts / comments on the platform to aid your learning. The Educators will answer comments and questions at a lower frequency in weeks 5 to 12.

Topics Covered

• Metabolism and the interaction of the metabolome with the genome, proteome and the environment
• The advantages of studying the metabolome
• The application of hypothesis generating studies versus the use of traditional hypothesis directed research
• The use of targeted and non-targeted studies in metabolomics
• An interdisciplinary approach with case-studies from clinical and environmental scientific areas
• Important considerations in studying the metabolome
• Experimental design and sample preparation
• The application of mass spectrometry in metabolomics
• An introduction to data processing and analysis
• Metabolite identification