The human serum metabolome.
Level 5 - mechanism / opinion, no new human data
Analytical bench chemistry and literature curation creating a reference database; Level 5 by design analogy.
PubMed 21359215 · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0016957
What was done
Combined targeted and non-targeted nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS), and liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (LC-MS) analytical methods with computer-aided literature mining to identify and quantify metabolites present in the human serum metabolome.
What was found
Identified and curated a collection of 4,229 confirmed and highly probable human serum compounds along with their concentrations, literature references, and disease links. No specific numerical concentrations or comparative effect sizes are provided in the abstract.
Why it matters
Provides a comprehensive, centralized multi-platform reference database of human serum metabolites to support metabolomic profiling and clinical biomarker research.
Limits
The abstract does not disclose the sample size, donor demographics, or health status for samples analyzed experimentally. Findings rely partly on literature mining and are bounded by the analytical sensitivity of 2011 metabolomics platforms.
Cited by
- supports There are more than 1,000 metabolites present in the human bloodstream.