Metaboolisten

Metaboolisten are curated, community-maintained lists of metabolites used to facilitate metabolomics data analysis and interpretation. They function as standardized inventories that support consistent annotation across experiments, laboratories, and analytical platforms, enabling more reliable comparisons and meta-analyses.

Origin and scope: The term appears in some Dutch-language metabolomics literature to describe living catalogs that evolve with new discoveries. Metaboolisten emphasize provenance and versioning, in contrast to static reference databases, and are often built through collaborative curation and peer review.

Content and structure: Each entry typically includes a preferred name and synonyms, chemical information (molecular formula, exact mass), identifiers (such as PubChem CID, KEGG, HMDB), and analytical attributes (retention time windows, MS/MS spectra when available). Biological context, including associated pathways and organismal relevance, and data provenance (submitter, date of addition, evidence level) are commonly included. Standards and controlled vocabularies from metabolomics initiatives aid interoperability, and links to related databases are provided where possible.

Management and use: Metaboolisten are usually managed by research consortia or community portals and may be hosted on public repositories or specialized platforms. They are designed to integrate with analysis workflows and software tools (for example, LC-MS and GC-MS data pipelines) to improve annotation accuracy and cross-study compatibility.

Applications and challenges: They support accurate metabolite annotation, cross-laboratory data sharing, and large-scale analyses. Challenges include incomplete coverage, varying naming conventions, and the need for ongoing curation and quality control. Ongoing efforts aim to harmonize formats and identifiers to bolster reproducibility and data exchange in metabolomics.

See also: Metabolomics, Metabolite databases, MetaboLights, MS/MS spectral libraries.