Metabolomics and its potential for assessment of adequacy and safety of amino acid intake

In this short paper, we suggest some concepts and methods that may be useful in considering a metabolomic approach to the study of amino acid adequacy and safety. We suggest that the analysis of a metabolomic subset, such as amino acids, may yield useful information, and that correlation-based analyses could be useful in the analysis of metabolomic data to determine which metabolites may be responsible for the effects of excessive intakes of amino acids. The use of correlation-based analyses would allow the use of arbitrarily scaled pseudoquantitative data, making it possible to analyze unidentified peaks, which may be observed when the object sample has gone through chromatographic analysis, together with known ones. We suggest that these basic concepts and methods could serve as the basis for a metabolomic approach for the assessment of the range of adequacy of amino acid intakes. J. Nutr. 133: 2097S-2100S, 2003.