Tobias Kind, Martin Scholz, Oliver Fiehn.
How Large Is the Metabolome? A Critical Analysis of Data Exchange Practices in Chemistry, PLoS ONE 4(5): e5440Calculating the metabolome size of species by genome-guided reconstruction of metabolic pathways misses all products from orphan genes and from enzymes lacking annotated genes. Hence, metabolomes need to be determined experimentally. Annotations by mass spectrometry would greatly benefit if peer-reviewed public databases could be queried to compile target lists of structures that already have been reported for a given species. We detail current obstacles to compile such a knowledge base of metabolites.