Metabolomics and medical sciences

Abstract

Once the genome DNA of a living organism is sequenced, it soon promotes the studies on genes, mRNAs, and proteins of the target and other living organisms, hi these studies mRNAs and proteins are directly linked to the genes that code their sequences and experimentally proved by using contemporary chemical analysis such as transcriptomics and proteomics. Genome analysis also promotes studies on metabohsms. The KEGG database (http://www.genome.jp) daily updates the metabolites, enzyme reactions, and metabolic pathway networks by integrating the newly determined genome data. These items in the database are directly linked to enzyme proteins that are deduced from the corresponding genes on genomes. ARM (Chapter 13) and GEM (Chapter 14) systems also automatically generate metabolic pathway network of a target organism. Li the database of metabolism and the generating systems, however, metabolites and enzyme reactions are predicted on the basis of our knowledge about the individual enzyme reactions that have been accumulated by biochemical studies.