Metabolomics, Genomics and Proteomics

Microbial Metabolism

Microbial metabolism is the means by which a microbe obtains the energy and nutrients. Microbial metabolomics is one of the platforms for integrating biological information into systems microbiology to facilitate the understanding of microbial interactions and cellular functions. Microbes use many different types of metabolic strategies and species can often be differentiated from each other based on metabolic characteristics. Bacterial metabolism focuses on the chemical diversity of substrate oxidations and dissimilation reactions (reactions by which substrate molecules are broken down), which normally function in bacteria to generate energy. With the scope of bacterial metabolism is the study of the uptake and utilization of the inorganic or organic compounds required for growth and maintenance of a cellular steady state (assimilation reactions).