Metabolic fingerprinting with capillary electrophoresis

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Science
• Analytical Chemistry

Background:

• Biomedical studies increasingly use metabolite profiling to understand disease and environmental impacts.
• Capillary electrophoresis (CE) is a suitable technique for analyzing biofluids and tissue extracts.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review the field of CE fingerprinting for biomedical applications.
• To organize and present key aspects of CE fingerprinting methodology and applications.

Main Methods:

• Sample treatment: Discusses advanced methods for compound extraction.
• Analytical methods: Covers various CE techniques and detection instrumentation.
• Chemometrics: Explains algorithms for peak alignment, normalization, data analysis, and metabolite identification.

Main Results:

• The review consolidates information on CE fingerprinting across sample preparation, analytical techniques, data processing, and applications.
• Highlights the multidisciplinary nature of CE fingerprinting studies, requiring collaboration between chemists, informaticians, and medical professionals.

Conclusions:

• CE fingerprinting offers a powerful top-down approach for analyzing complex biological samples.
• The review provides a comprehensive overview of CE fingerprinting, from sample handling to data interpretation and diverse applications.