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Introduction to Microbial Metabolomics

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Microbial Metabolomics

Abstract

We could say that the concept of metabolomics started with microorganisms because the first published metabolome studies were focused on microbial systems and since the early 1990s, metabolite profiling has been applied to microbiology for phenotypic characterization of microbial strains and as a tool for microbial identification. This chapter presents a brief history of microbial metabolomics in the past 14 years, highlighting major breakthroughs and achievements as well as remaining technical challenges in the field. The future of microbial metabolomics will certainly depend on increasing sensitivity of analytical techniques to allow the detection and identification of intracellular metabolites using very small biomass samples. Mass spectrometry seems to be the technology with best potential to achieve this objective. Important recent steps have been taken towards this goal, meaning that single-cell microbial metabolomics could be very close to reality.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Biological Sciences, University of Auckland, 3A Symonds Street, Auckland, 1142, New Zealand

    Silas G. Villas-Boas

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  1. Silas G. Villas-Boas
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Correspondence to Silas G. Villas-Boas .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Land and Water, CSIRO, Dutton Park, Queensland, Australia

    David J. Beale

  2. Metabolomics Australia, Bio21 Molecular Science & Biotechnology Institute, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia

    Konstantinos A. Kouremenos

  3. Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia

    Enzo A. Palombo

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Villas-Boas, S.G. (2016). Introduction to Microbial Metabolomics. In: Beale, D., Kouremenos, K., Palombo, E. (eds) Microbial Metabolomics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46326-1_1

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