Scientists Map the Human Metabolome

Cache22x writes "Scientists at the University of Alberta have published the first draft of the Human Metabolome Project, the chemical equivalent of the human genome. In the same spirit as the human genome project, the information has been made freely available to the scientific community and the general public through the project's website. Knowing the makeup of the metabolome will lead to potentially enormous medical advances as clinicians now have a comparative base for analyzing the metabolite levels found in our bodies."

Comments

Males vs. Females

[asiansteev]

Does this project specify which are male or female specific?

This may actually be more useful

[Anonymous Coward]

The future is epigenetic. The sequence of the genome is a cold, dead thing that does not exist in nature. Nature uses the runtime system of particular cells. The DNA is methylated and the chromatin is modeled (and other as yet undiscovered mechanisms may exist) in a particular runtime configuration for a particular type of cell. These guys seem to be looking at the end products of this runtime configuration. I suspect all those dead areas of "junk" DNA will make much more sense when we stop looking at cold, dead DNA that has been stripped of "life" and start looking at the actual cells as they exists en vivo.

Re:Hmmm

[iggymanz]

you go for a blood test and your doctor gets a list of maybe the levels of about 48 chemicals. Wouldn't it be better to know what hundreds of others chemicals presence and concentration in the blood should be and what they mean? (the answer is Heck Yes!). This data will also apply to other sampling tests from the body, whether hair or saliva or urine or semen, it will aid diagnosis.