Online metabolomics databases and pipelines

As metabolomics becomes an increasingly major component of modern biological research, steps must be taken to preserve and make maximal use of the ever increasing torrents of new data entering the public domain. While this task is by no means unique to the field of metabolomics, the complexity, heterogeneity and large sizes of metabolomics datasets make the development of effective metabolomics bioinformatics tools particularly challenging. Despite these challenges, metabolomics specialists have recently been making rapid progress in this area. A wide range of powerful web-based tools designed to facilitate the systematic online storage, processing, dissemination and biological interpretation of technically and biologically diverse metabolomics datasets have now emerged and are rapidly becoming cornerstones of advancement in biological science.