How will diet affect health?

One of the most important parts of life science research is exploring the health effects of specific dietary pattern.

For this, many scientists turned to metabolomic.

Currently, human untargeted metabolomic studies have identified only about 10% of molecular features, that is, 90% of molecular features are unknow.

In a new study published in Nature Biotechnology on July 7, 2022, a large international research team led by the University of California, San Diego describes a new method for untargeted metabolomics that All metabolites were matched against a large sample database involving chemical inventories, providing an unprecedented catalog of molecular signatures resulting from food or its processing in the gu.

Untargeted mass spectrometry is a very sensitive technique that can detect hundreds to thousands of molecules in complex biological sample.

"We can now link molecules in the diet to clinical health outcomes, not one at a time, but all at once, which has previously Impossibl.

The study also used metagenomics to measure genetic material in biological samples and characterize the microbes presen.

Basically, every molecule is stripped of electrons to make it charge.

To exemplify RDD metabolomics, and because diet is critical to health, the team created a food metabolomics reference datase.

In the study, participants received a control diet twice over 4 day.

To assess whether RDDs could reveal dietary preferences, the team also analyzed a dataset of omnivores and vegetarian.

"The new approach will have a huge impact on Alzheimer's research, as patients may not be able to remember or explain what they ate," said study co-corresponding author D.

Of particular interest, the team said, was the large improvement in molecular weight in blood or feces when food was matched to a population, for example, it was possible to analyze the diet from Italy to match what the UC San Diego team is studyin.

"This really shows how important food samples and clinical samples taken from around the world are to allow us to understand how molecules and microbes interact and improve or decrease our health outcomes depending on a particular diet," Knight sai.

Taken together, this new method could give us a more complete picture of the origin of multiple chemicals in human, animal and environmental sample.

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