non-targeted metabolomic analyses to identify small molecules with related biosynthesis and to focus on those that may not have previously well known structures. Fluxomics is a further development of metabolomics. The disadvantage of metabolomics is that it only provides the user with abundances or concentrations of metabolites, while fluxomics determines the reaction rates of metabolic reactions and can trace metabolites in a biological system over time. Nutrigenomics is a generalised term which links genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics to human nutrition. In general a metabolome in a given body fluid is influenced by endogenous factors such as age, sex, body composition and genetics as well as underlying pathologies. The large bowel microflora are also a very significant potential confounder of metabolic profiles and could be classified as either an endogenous or exogenous factor. The main exogenous factors are diet and drugs. Diet can then be broken down to nutrients and non-nutrients. Metabolomics is one means to determine a biological endpoint, or metabolic fingerprint, which reflects the balance of all these forces on an individual's metabolism. Plant metabolomics is designed to study the overall changes in metabolites of plant samples and then conduct deep data mining and chemometric analysis. Specialized metabolites are considered components of plant defense systems biosynthesized in response to biotic and abiotic stresses.Metabolomics approaches have recently been used to assess the natural variance in metabolite content between individual plants, an approach with great potential for the improvement of the compositional quality of crops. See also Epigenomics Fluxomics Genomics Lipidomics Molecular epidemiology Molecular medicine Molecular pathology Precision medicine Proteomics Transcriptomics References Further reading External links Human Metabolome Database (HMDB) METLIN XCMS LCMStats Metabolights NIH Common Fund Metabolomics Consortium Metabolomics Workbench Golm Metabolome Database Metabolon Metabolism Systems biology Omics