Canadian Researchers First to Complete the Human Metabolome-The Menu of Life 07-026

Researchers at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Canada, have announced the completion of the first draft of the human metabolome, the chemical equivalent of the human genome, or what I see as the "menu for human life."

The metabolome is the complete complement of all small molecule chemicals (metabolites) found in or produced by an organism. By analogy, if the genome represents the blueprint of life, the metabolome represents the ingredients of life.

The scientists have catalogued and characterized 2,500 metabolites, 1,200 drugs and 3,500 food components that can be found in the human body.

The research is published in the journal Nucleic Acids Research.

Why  is this significant or important?

The researchers believe that the results of their work represent the starting point for a new era in diagnosing and detecting diseases.

They believe that the Human Metabolome Project (HMP), which began in Canada in 2004, will have a more immediate impact on medicine and medical practices than the Human Genome Project, because the metabolome is far more sensitive to the body’s health and physiology.

• This technology could be what I call a "catalyst or  accelerator technology" that pushes progress forward in many other disciplines, like rapid DNA sequencing did for  breakthroughs in genetics.
• Since a single base change in our DNA can lead to a 100,000X change in metabolite levels, the results of this research will have a significant impact on the diagnosis, prediction, prevention and monitoring of many genetic, infectious and environmental diseases.
• The metabolome is exquisitely sensitive to what a person eats, where they live, the time of day, the time of year, their general health and even their mood. The HMP is aimed at allowing doctors to better diagnose and treat diseases, based on these natural variations.
• Most medical tests today are based on measuring metabolites in blood or urine,” researchers says. “Unfortunately, less than 1% of known metabolites are being used in routine clinical testing. If you can only see 1% of what’s going on in the body, you’re obviously going to miss a lot.” say scientists.
• With the data in the Human Metabolome DataBase (HMDB), anyone can find out what metabolites are associated with which diseases, what the normal and abnormal concentrations are, where the metabolites are found or what genes are associated with which metabolites.
• It’s the first time that this sort of data has been compiled into one spot. By decoding the human metabolome, scientists can identify and diagnose hundreds of diseases in a matter of seconds at a cost of pennies.

By measuring or acquiring chemical, biological and disease association data on all known human metabolites, the HMP Consortium, which consists of some 50 scientists based at the University of Alberta and the University of Calgary, has spent the past two and half years compiling the remaining 95% of all known metabolites in the human metabolome.

Detailed information about each of the 2500 metabolites identified so far can be found on the Human Metabolome Database (HMDB) at http://www.hmdb.ca.

The database currently contains more than 2100 metabolite entries including both water-soluble and lipid soluble metabolites as well as metabolites that would be regarded as either abundant (>1 mM) or relatively rare (<1 nM). Additionally, approximately 5500 protein (and DNA) sequences are linked to these metabolite entries. Each MetaboCard entry contains more than 90 data fields with half of the information being devoted to chemical/clinical data and the other half devoted to enzymatic or biochemical data. Many data fields are hyperlinked to other databases (KEGG, PubChem, MetaCyc, ChEBI, PDB, SwissProt, GenBank) and a variety of structure and pathway viewing applets. The database supports extensive text, sequence, chemical structure and relational query searches.

Long Term Implications?

Could this be the first nail in the coffin of the Medical profession? If you get widespread metabolic diagnosis and instant results, a "doc-in-a-box", why would you need a doctor?  Wouldn't a nurse do just as well?  This could be a seriously disruptive technology for the status quo and power of doctors.

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Walter Derzko

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