Metabonomics study of urine samples of patients with hyperlipidemic pancreatitis / 中华胰腺病杂志

Objective Metabonomics method based gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC/MS)were used to analyze the urine samples of patients with hyperlipidemic pancreatitis (HLP) to describe the characteristics of metabolism changes of HLP,identify potential biomarkers,and investigate the role of metabonomics study in the management of AP.Methods 24 patients of HLP and 40 age,sex matched volunteers were enrolled and their urine samples were collected.The urine samples underwent preparation,derivation and GC/MS analysis,Orthogonal-Projection to Latent Structures-Discriminant Analysis (OPLS-DA)were performed to detect the metabolic profile difference between the HLP and control group.Results HLP patients can be precisely distinguished from healthy controls.21 metabolites (credibility ＞ 700 ) were identified using the reference compounds available in the libraries of NIST and Wiley.It was identified that levels of nicotinic acid,aconitie acid,citric acid,hippurie acid,hydroxyphenylacetic acid,hydroxyphenylpropionicacid were decreased,while the levels of tryptophan,tyrosine,tyramine,16-hexadecanoic acid,18octadecanoie acid were increased.It was also suggested that there was change in tricarboxylic acid cycle and gut bacterial flora,as well as fat metabolism and metabolism of amino acid.Conclusions There are differences between healthy controls and HLP patients in the term of GC/MS metabolic profiling,and the biomarkers in the metabolites could be found through metabonomics analysis,and the mechanisms of the metabolic changes could be explored.It was noted that the research of metabolites in the urine samples may be a useful tool to help diagnose and understand the pathogenesis of HLP.Metabonomics analysis is a promising research method.

Functional genomic approaches to explore secondary metabolites in medicinal plants / 中国中药杂志

Extensive genomic data concerning medicinal plants are rather scarce and insights of the secondary metabolic pathways and their regulatory mechanism are insufficient, hampering the broad application of cell or tissue cultivation and metabolic engineering to producing high-value secondary metabolites. The integration of cDNA-AFLP based transcript profiling and metabolomics, a new development of functional genomic approaches could establish correlations between the changes of secondary metabolites and expressions of related genes. It has manifested widely applicative prospects in seeking genes involved in biosynthesis of secondary metabolites and exploring secondary metabolic pathways. Functional genomic approaches are promising trends in the field of medicinal plants secondary metabolites research and will lead to better utilization of natural medicinal resources.