Plant, Food and Nutritional Metabolomics
A special issue of Metabolites (ISSN 2218-1989). This special issue belongs to the section "Nutrition and Metabolism".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 August 2023) | Viewed by 15368
Special Issue Editors
Interests: 1H NMR; metabolomics; natural products research; organic chemistry
Interests: metabolic phenotyping; inflammatory bowel disease; personalized nutrition; pharmacology; toxicology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Metabolomics, metabonomics, metabolic profiling, or metabolic phenotyping continues to be a highly dynamic and important line of research in the biological sciences. Nowadays, metabolomics studies have provided valuable information for a better understanding of the complex action of biological systems, becoming in a few years an essential tool of primary choice to undertake research focused on cellular metabolism and its physiological implications.
A metabolomics study requires the support of analytical platforms that provide information on the systematic identification and quantification of specialized metabolites, mainly from the various metabolic pathways that occur at the corresponding levels in systems biology.
The main analytical platforms for metabolomics studies are Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and double or triple hyphenated-Mass Spectrometry as well as, to a lesser extent, infrared or ultraviolet. Altogether, these analytical tools have found in metabolomics a wide and fertile field of applications that have motivated the development of new techniques associated with technological innovations and bioinformatic packages that greatly facilitate the analysis of samples in an untargeted and targeted context.
Multivariate and univariate tools, including linear and non-linear methods, are normally used to analyze data sets collected by any analytical platform used in metabolomics. These chemometric tools allow to extract information from spectroscopic data with biological meaning to better understand the model under study.
Metabolic profiling makes it possible to elucidate at molecular level any link between diet and disease risk in the context of a superorganism in which the gut microbiota plays a pivotal role in health and disease. In this sense, some foods or food supplements may influence the gut microbiota, such as probiotics, prebiotics, symbiotics, and postbiotics. In the specific case of diet, it is possible to relate its biomarkers with health risk, which could also include co-metabolites and/or metabolites produced by the gut microbiota alone.
When studying the beneficial effect of traditional medicine, nutraceuticals or any dietary intervention in nutritional and epidemiological protocols, it is possible to discover the molecule, or combination of molecules, derived from these sources that produce therapeutic effects on a given disease. The final purpose of metabolic profiling is to translate this knowledge into clinical practice in order to recommend a properly stratified patient to take a personalized treatment, and thus monitor adherence, efficacy and effectiveness.
Metabolic profiling allows to explore biomarkers generated by the intake of a specific natural product, food and/or a complete diet, and to relate them with a beneficial effect. It is suggested to first include healthy models or participants, and then patients or models targeting a specific disease or biological activity. In this way, the aim is to unveil the biomarkers or pathways affected by such intake per se, to confirm whether they are related to the therapeutic effect or not.
The strongly multidisciplinary nature of metabolomics has achieved the convergence of several areas of knowledge focused on the interrogation of biological systems with the aim of understanding their integral functioning and their sensitive environmental interactions. The emergence of new metabolomics protocols has broadened their applications in all areas of knowledge related to the great cascade of biochemical events that define the state of any biological system. Through this approach it is possible to obtain an accurate biological interpretation, allowing a deeper understanding of the biological model under study. Thus, metabolomics studies are currently having a great impact not only in research focused on human health, but also in cellular, animal and plant research.
In this regard, this Special Issue welcomes clinical and non-clinical studies performing an untargeted or targeted approach using ex vivo, in vivo, or in vitro models targeting communicable or noncommunicable diseases, where any treatment using natural products, drugs, food or diet prove to be beneficial. Natural products used in traditional and complementary medicine are advised, including a broad range of sources such as microbes, plants, fungus, insects, algae, marine, etc. This Issue also aims to cover studies on the health of livestock, poultry, plants and crops, including genetic modification, as well as those related to environmental and human health effects, and agricultural and biotechnological sectors.
Dr. L. Gerardo Zepeda Vallejo
Dr. José Iván Serrano-Contreras
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Metabolites is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- 1H/13C NMR-based metabolomics
- UPLC/HPLC/GC-Mass spectrometry-based metabolomics
- chemical/metabolic profiling
- chemotaxonomic markers
- marine metabolites
- specialized metabolites
- lipids
- biofluids
- medicinal plants
- foodomics
- nutrimetabolomics
- metabolic pathways
- gut microbiome
- multiomics
- untargeted/targeted analysis
- multivariate statistics
- chemometrics
Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue
- Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
- Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
- Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
- External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
- e-Book format: Special Issues with more than 10 articles can be published as dedicated e-books, ensuring wide and rapid dissemination.
Further information on MDPI's Special Issue polices can be found here.
