Genomic/ Proteomic/ Metabonomic Profiling in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)

Techniques such as genomics, proteomics and metabonomics, Technologies that aim to identify and quantify the dynamic set of all small molecules and metabolites present in an organism or a biological sample, offer the prospect of efficiently distinguishing individuals with particular diseases. The advantages of proteomics and metabonomics is that it can be carried out on a standard preparation of serum, plasma or urine, circumventing the need for specialist preparation of cellular mRNA required for genomics This methodology is based on mass spectrometry (MS), gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to analyze metabolites. High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) may also be applied. Several peak alignment algorithms have been developed to match the chromatograms before applying pattern recognition. Based on the pattern recognition, several potential biomarkers may be found and further identified by MS.. Finally, a number of potential biomarkers will be identified for distinguishing asthma and COPD.