Metabolomics is the profiling of metabolites in a given biological environment.  Environmental resolutions range from the cell to tissue to organ to organism.  Much like transcriptomes and proteomes, the matabolome is a dynamic environment, where each profiling is a snapshot in time.  Current techniques do not allow complete profiling of an given metabolome, for each profile ideally will have every intermediate, hormone, signalling molecule, product, and secondary metabolite recorded with quantity.  Separation techniques include, gas chromotography, high performance liquid chromotography, and capillary electrophoresis.  Detection techniques include gas spectroscopy and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Due to the unstable nature of some of these metabolites, it has been proven difficult to use these techniques to profile each metabolome in its entirety.

Application of having profiled metabolomes include:

• Toxicology
• Metabonomics – metabolomic profiling of diseased tissue
• Functional genomics – understanding phenotype response to genetic manipulation
• Nutrigenomics – understanding of ‘omics in regard to human nutrition
• Environmental metabolomics – understanding of metabolites in interaction with the environment