Quantitative metabolomics using NMR

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy can be used to both identify and quantify chemicals from complex mixtures. This can be done semi-automatically by comparing the mixture of interest to a library of reference spectra derived from pure compounds of known concentrations. This particular approach is now being exploited to characterize the metabolomes of many different biological samples in what is called quantitative metabolomics or targeted metabolic profiling. This review describes some of the practical aspects pertaining to NMR-based quantitative metabolomics and highlights some of the strengths, limitations and applications of this particular approach to metabolomics.