MetaboLights

MetaboLights provides an open-access repository for metabolomics studies, storing raw experimental data and associated metadata to support investigations of metabolic changes induced by disease, diet, and environmental factors across multiple species.

Key Features:

• Cross-species coverage: Includes studies across eight species, including Homo sapiens, Caenorhabditis elegans, Mus musculus, and Arabidopsis thaliana.
• Diverse experimental techniques: Contains datasets generated using metabolomics methodologies including NMR spectroscopy and mass spectrometry.
• Comprehensive data inclusion: Stores metabolite structures, reference spectra, biological roles, locations, concentrations, and raw metabolic experiment data.
• Standardized accession numbers: Assigns stable unique accession numbers to studies (e.g., MTBLS1) for citation and retrieval.
• Integration with ChEBI: Maps identified metabolites to the Chemical Entities of Biological Interest (ChEBI) database.

Scientific Applications:

• Cross-species metabolic comparisons: Enables comparison of metabolomic data across species to examine conserved and species-specific metabolic responses.
• Study of perturbations: Supports investigations of metabolic changes induced by disease, diet, and environmental factors.
• Technique-specific analyses: Facilitates analyses centered on NMR spectroscopy and mass spectrometry datasets.
• Metabolite identification and contextualization: Supports identification and characterization of metabolites using structures, reference spectra, concentration data, and ChEBI mappings.

Methodology:

Uses the open-source ISA (Investigation-Study-Assay) framework to standardize data collection and representation.