Metabolomics aims to detect all small metabolites in a cell or organism. Rapid profiling techniques may determine all metabolites produced by a microorganism. These techniques are generally segregated into fingerprinting, footprinting, profiling, or target analysis.
Get a "chemical picture" of the sample where the signals cannot necessarily be used to detect/identify specific metabolites and depends strongly on the technique used.
It requires that signals in the profile (e.g. peaks in a chromatogram) can be assigned to a specific metabolite whether it is of known structure or not.
Determine and quantify specific metabolites.
Fingerprinting, profiling or target analysis can be performed by e.g. thin-layer chromatography (TLC) screening, by mass-profiling using direct infusion ESI-MS, by NMR, or more by doing elaborate profiling and target analysis, using hyphenated analytical methodologies e.g. GC-MS(-MS), LC-UV(spectrometric), LC-MS(-MS), LC-NMR and other combinations.
