Metabolon's Deliverables

In the end, Metabolon's comprehensive biochemical profiling service provides information about a broad range of biochemicals and how they change in response to experimental variables.  The information is delivered to the client in a variety of ways, at a number of different levels to provide a complete picture of the biochemical effects.

Full Biochemical Profile Plots.  For each sample, the identified biochemicals are displayed on a z-plot, providing a high-level view of how biochemicals change during the experiment.  An example of z-plots is shown below for a time course study, analyzing both urine and plasma.  Each dot represents a different biochemical, the red dots representing the experimental sample, and the blue dots representing the control sample.  Displacement along the horizontal axis represents the extent of change, in terms of standard deviation, from the control sample.

Affected Biochemicals.  The next level of analysis involves grouping the significant biochemical changes by biochemical pathway.  These "heat maps" allow a quick identification of biochemicals which increase or decrease relative to control.  The following example is a portion (one of several pages) of a pathway-centric analysis of affected biochemicals.  Red cells represent a biochemical which has increased relative to the control and green, a decrease.

Statistical Analysis and Biochemical Interpretation .  Drilling further into the data, the significantly altered biochemicals are put into the context of biochemical pathways.  By putting these changes in the context of their biochemical pathways, it is easier to understand the experimental effects (e.g. which targets a drug is affecting).  The example below shows the effect of a drug on biochemicals on the citric acid cycle.