Recent developments and applications of metabolomics in microbiological investigations

• Metabolomics is a relatively new technique for microbiological studies.
• We review general aspects of microbial metabolomics.
• We review recent studies and future trends in microbial metabolomics.

Metabolomics is the comprehensive (qualitative and quantitative) analysis of all metabolites within an organism or a biological system. By studying endogenous metabolites produced from an organism in or around growing biosystems or cells at a given time during growth or the production cycle, metabolomics can potentially provide critical information to help understand the changes occurring in the relevant metabolic pathways. The emerging field of microbial metabolomics has received much attention in recent years, because it not only offers a broad picture of the altered pathways, but also elaborates the mechanisms of the interplay between microbe and host. This article reviews major issues in microbial metabolomics, and gives a comprehensive, critical overview of the current state of the art, future challenges and trends in microbal metabolomics, including systems microbiology and foodomics.