What is metabolomics? Metabolomics is a relatively new member to the ‘-omics’ family of systems biology technologies (Bino et.al. 2004). The term ‘metabolome’ was coined in 1998 and was used to describe the metabolite complement of living tissues (Oliver et.al. 1998). Despite its relative youth (in comparison to genomics and proteomics), metabolomics as a field of study is now firmly established as a functional genetics approach to understanding the molecular complexity of life (Wagner et.al. 2003). Today, it even has a journal with its namesake, Metabolomics, dedicated to scribing its tribulations and advances (available at www.springeronline.com). This paper will briefly…
The Science Creative Quarterly
By Genoa Barchet
Genoa Barchet is a graduate student in the Faculty of Forestry at the University of British Columbia. Three of her favorite things to do are reading, thinking while walking, and hiking up mountains. She was raised in sunny Maui, Hawaii, but prefers the mists of coastal British Columbia. She really is very happy when it rains.