What is Environmental Metabolomics?
Metabolomics is a new experimental technique that is becoming widely used in biology, medicine and the environmental sciences for studying living organisms. This method measures the concentrations of the large numbers of naturally occurring small molecules (called metabolites) that are present in blood, urine, and tissues. The pattern, or fingerprint, of metabolites in the biological sample can be used to learn about the “health” of the organism. This approach is being used to study human diseases, with the goal to find unique patterns of metabolites that could be used to diagnose specific diseases. In a similar manner, environmental metabolomics is being used to study the effects of environmental stress – such as pollution and climate change – on the health of fish and invertebrate organisms that live in our natural environment. Areas of application of environmental metabolomics include aquatic toxicology, terrestrial toxicology, fish diseases, aquaculture, environmental monitoring an
