Metabolism Mapped

WIKIMEDIA, S. KORSMEYER - NCIAn international team has traced the connections between hundreds of molecules involved in metabolism and genetic regions, uncovering the roots of metabolic disorders such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and hypertension. The researchers published their work—what amounts to the most comprehensive accounting of human metabolism—yesterday (May 11) in Nature Genetics.

“The sheer wealth of biological information we have uncovered is extraordinary,” lead author Nicole Soranzo, a researcher at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in the U.K., said in a statement. “It’s exciting to think that researchers can now take this freely available information forward to better understand the molecular underpinnings of a vast range of metabolic associations.”

Soranzo and her colleagues linked a total of 145 genetic regions with more than 400 molecules involved in human metabolism in blood and uncovered 90 new genetic associations that were previously unknown to science. The team also...