What Is a Metabolome?

Metabolome refers to the dynamic whole of endogenous metabolites in an organism. The traditional concept of metabolism includes both biosynthesis and biodegradation, so theoretically metabolites should include nucleic acids, proteins, lipid biomacromolecules, and other small molecule metabolites. However, in order to distinguish it from the genome, transcriptome and proteome, the metabolome previously involved only small molecular metabolites with a relative molecular mass of less than about 1,000, and now all the above substances are included.