Metabolite
Encyclopedia
Metabolites are the intermediates and products of metabolism
Metabolism
Metabolism is the set of chemical reactions that happen in the cells of living organisms to sustain life. These processes allow organisms to grow and reproduce, maintain their structures, and respond to their environments. Metabolism is usually divided into two categories...

. The term metabolite is usually restricted to small molecule
Small molecule
In the fields of pharmacology and biochemistry, a small molecule is a low molecular weight organic compound which is by definition not a polymer...

s. A primary metabolite is directly involved in normal growth, development, and reproduction. Alcohol is an example of a primary metabolite produced in large-scale by industrial microbiology
Industrial microbiology
Industrial microbiology or microbial biotechnology encompasses the use of microorganisms in the manufacture of food or industrial products. The use of microorganisms for the production of food, either human or animal, is often considered a branch of food microbiology...

. A secondary metabolite
Secondary metabolite
Secondary metabolites are organic compounds that are not directly involved in the normal growth, development, or reproduction of an organism. Unlike primary metabolites, absence of secondary metabolities does not result in immediate death, but rather in long-term impairment of the organism's...

 is not directly involved in those processes, but usually has an important ecological
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...

 function. Examples include antibiotics and pigment
Pigment
A pigment is a material that changes the color of reflected or transmitted light as the result of wavelength-selective absorption. This physical process differs from fluorescence, phosphorescence, and other forms of luminescence, in which a material emits light.Many materials selectively absorb...

s such as resins and tepenes etc. Some antibiotics use primary metabolites as precursors, such as actinomycin
Actinomycin
The actinomycins are a class of polypeptide antibiotics isolated from soil bacteria of the genus Streptomyces, of which the most significant is actinomycin D. It was the first antibiotic isolated by Selman Waksman and his co-worker H. B. Woodruff in 1940.-Mechanism:Actinomycin D is primarily used...

 which is created from the primary metabolite, tryptophan
Tryptophan
Tryptophan is one of the 20 standard amino acids, as well as an essential amino acid in the human diet. It is encoded in the standard genetic code as the codon UGG...

.

Examples of primary metabolites produced by industrial microbiology:
Class Example
Alcohol Ethanol
Amino acids Glutamic acid, Aspartic acid
Nucleotides 5' guanylic acid
Antioxidants Isoasorbic acid
Organic acids Acetic acid, Lactic acid
Polyols Glycerol
Vitamins B2


The metabolome
Metabolome
Metabolome refers to the complete set of small-molecule metabolites to be found within a biological sample, such as a single organism...

 forms a large network of metabolic reactions, where outputs from one enzymatic chemical reaction
Chemical reaction
A chemical reaction is a process that leads to the transformation of one set of chemical substances to another. Chemical reactions can be either spontaneous, requiring no input of energy, or non-spontaneous, typically following the input of some type of energy, such as heat, light or electricity...

 are inputs to other chemical reactions.

Metabolites from chemical compound
Chemical compound
A chemical compound is a pure chemical substance consisting of two or more different chemical elements that can be separated into simpler substances by chemical reactions. Chemical compounds have a unique and defined chemical structure; they consist of a fixed ratio of atoms that are held together...

s, whether inherent or pharmaceutical, are formed as part of the natural biochemical process of degrading and eliminating the compounds. The rate of degradation of a compound is an important determinant of the duration and intensity of its action. Profiling metabolites of pharmaceutical compounds, drug metabolism
Drug metabolism
Drug metabolism is the biochemical modification of pharmaceutical substances by living organisms, usually through specialized enzymatic systems. This is a form of xenobiotic metabolism. Drug metabolism often converts lipophilic chemical compounds into more readily excreted polar products...

, is an important part of drug discovery
Drug discovery
In the fields of medicine, biotechnology and pharmacology, drug discovery is the process by which drugs are discovered or designed.In the past most drugs have been discovered either by identifying the active ingredient from traditional remedies or by serendipitous discovery...

, leading to an understanding of any undesirable side effect
Side effect
In medicine, a side effect is an effect, whether therapeutic or adverse, that is secondary to the one intended; although the term is predominantly employed to describe adverse effects, it can also apply to beneficial, but unintended, consequences of the use of a drug.Occasionally, drugs are...

s.

See also

  • Secondary metabolite
    Secondary metabolite
    Secondary metabolites are organic compounds that are not directly involved in the normal growth, development, or reproduction of an organism. Unlike primary metabolites, absence of secondary metabolities does not result in immediate death, but rather in long-term impairment of the organism's...

  • Antimetabolite
    Antimetabolite
    An antimetabolite is a chemical that inhibits the use of a metabolite, which is another chemical that is part of normal metabolism. Such substances are often similar in structure to the metabolite that they interfere with, such as the antifolates that interfere with the use of folic acid...

  • Metabolic control analysis
    Metabolic control analysis
    Metabolic control analysis is a mathematical framework for describingmetabolic, signaling and genetic pathways. MCA quantifies how variables,such as fluxes and species concentrations, depend on network parameters....

    , a specific kind of control analysis
  • Metabolome
    Metabolome
    Metabolome refers to the complete set of small-molecule metabolites to be found within a biological sample, such as a single organism...

  • Metabolomics
    Metabolomics
    Metabolomics is the scientific study of chemical processes involving metabolites. Specifically, metabolomics is the "systematic study of the unique chemical fingerprints that specific cellular processes leave behind", the study of their small-molecule metabolite profiles...

    = the study of global metabolite profiles in a system (cell, tissue, or organism) under a given set of conditions.
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