Expression genomics and proteomics approaches have provided important insights into the roles of specific genes and proteins. Now, researchers monitoring other components of living organisms are finding ways to adapt the "big picture" outlook characteristic of these disciplines to their own work.
For example, Lipomics Technologies Inc. of West Sacramento, Calif., is developing methods and tools to simultaneously quantify lipid metabolites on a large scale. As with other types of comprehensive analyses, the data obtained in a lipid profile can be used not only to address the experimental question at hand, but can also be incorporated into databases for future in silico studies.
According to Lipomics Technologies and its collaborators at the University of California, Davis, lipids are an attractive subset of metabolites for bioinformatic studies because they are important biological mediators, and their concentrations are reflective of both diet and metabolism.1 The impact of dietary lipids and lipid...
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