An overview of metabolomic and proteomic profiling in bipolar disorder and its clinical value.

Introduction: Bipolar disorder (BD) is a complex psychiatric disease characterized by alternating mood episodes. As for any other psychiatric illness, currently there is no biochemical test that is able to support diagnosis or therapeutic decisions for BD. In this context, the discovery and validation of biomarkers are interesting strategies that can be achieved through proteomics and metabolomics.

Metabolomic and proteomic profiling in bipolar disorder patients revealed potential molecular signatures related to hemostasis.

Introduction: Bipolar disorder (BD) is a mood disorder characterized by the occurrence of depressive episodes alternating with episodes of elevated mood (known as mania). There is also an increased risk of other medical comorbidities.

Objectives: This work uses a systems biology approach to compare BD treated patients with healthy controls (HCs), integrating proteomics and metabolomics data using partial correlation analysis in order to observe the interactions between altered proteins and metabolites, as well as proposing a potential metabolic signature panel for the disease.

Foodomics for agroecology: Differentiation of volatile profile in mint (Mentha × gracilis Sole) from permaculture, organic and conventional agricultural systems using HS-SPME/GC-MS.

In the present study, foodomics approach was employed to investigate changes in the metabolism from the volatile terpenoids profile of mint(Mentha × gracillis Sole)from conventional, organic and permaculture (a type of agroecological agriculture system) farms using headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) associated to gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and chemometric tools. The discrimination among the three types of mint was successfully achieved and demonstrated evidence of ecological interaction impact in the food metabolism. The agroecological mint presented as differential compounds: α-terpineol, bornyl formate, cis-carvyl propionate, cis-carveol, camphor, dihydrocarvyl acetate, dihydrocarveol, karahanaenone, nonanal, 3-octyl acetate, and trans-3-hexenyl-2 methylbutyrate.

Linking Gut Microbiome and Lipid Metabolism: Moving beyond Associations.

Various studies aiming to elucidate the role of the gut microbiome-metabolome co-axis in health and disease have primarily focused on water-soluble polar metabolites, whilst non-polar microbial lipids have received less attention. The concept of microbiota-dependent lipid biotransformation is over a century old. However, only recently, several studies have shown how microbial lipids alter intestinal and circulating lipid concentrations in the host, thus impacting human lipid homeostasis.

Systems biology approaches to study lipidomes in health and disease.

Lipids have many important biological roles, such as energy storage sources, structural components of plasma membranes and as intermediates in metabolic and signaling pathways. Lipid metabolism is under tight homeostatic control, exhibiting spatial and dynamic complexity at multiple levels. Consequently, lipid-related disturbances play important roles in the pathogenesis of most of the common diseases.

A preliminary study of bipolar disorder type I by mass spectrometry-based serum lipidomics.

The present study aimed at investigating possible alterations in the serum lipid profile of euthymic patients with bipolar disorder type I (BD) compared to healthy controls (HC). Thirty-five individuals from both genders were recruited, with 14 diagnosed and treated as BD patients (BD group) and 21 healthy subjects (HC group). Clinical assessment was based on the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I Disorders (SCID-I), Young Mania Rating Scale (YMRS), and 17-items of Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS-17) data, which were used to confirm diagnosis, to verify psychiatric comorbidities, and to estimate the severity of manic and depressive symptoms.

Metabolomics: Definitions and Significance in Systems Biology.

Nowadays, there is a growing interest in deeply understanding biological mechanisms not only at the molecular level (biological components) but also the effects of an ongoing biological process in the organism as a whole (biological functionality), as established by the concept of systems biology. Within this context, metabolomics is one of the most powerful bioanalytical strategies that allow obtaining a picture of the metabolites of an organism in the course of a biological process, being considered as a phenotyping tool. Briefly, metabolomics approach consists in identifying and determining the set of metabolites (or specific metabolites) in biological samples (tissues, cells, fluids, or organisms) under normal conditions in comparison with altered states promoted by disease, drug treatment, dietary intervention, or environmental modulation.