Technology of the month
Metabolic Flux Analysis: Moving beyond Static Metabolomics

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ADVANTAGES:

MFA compared to static metabolomics:

  • Deep insight into the metabolism in a variety of in vitro (e.g., patient-derived cells) and in vivo (e.g., animal models, humans) models.

  • Can detect even slight changes in biochemical pathway activity.

  • Does not focus just on substrate–product as the classic enzymatic studies do.

MS-based isotopologue analysis:

  • High sensitivity (nM concentrations).

  • Coverage of a wide range of metabolites.

  • Widely available instrumentation.

  • Scalable.

  • Rapid data acquisition.

NMR-based

CHALLENGES:

MFA compared to static metabolomics:

  • Requires advanced analytical chemistry techniques.

  • Requires a priori experimental design – incompatible with most biobanks.

  • Time consuming.

  • Expensive.

MS-based isotopologue analysis:

  • Requires predefined models to interpret metabolite mass shifts.

  • Requires chromatographic separation to resolve chemical species.

  • Destructive to the sample.

NMR-based isotopomer analysis:

  • Lower sensitivity.

  • Limited to a narrow breadth of the metabolome.

  • Expensive instrumentation.

  • Higher

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