METABOHUB / MetaboHUB-INRAE

MetaboHUB is a national infrastructure for metabolomics and fluxomics created in 2013 and coordinated by INRAE, its main contributor.

The goal of metabolomics is to globally measure the components of metabolism that are essential for the functioning of cells and tissues. These metabolites include all small molecules (sugars, amino acids, lipids, etc.) produced or consumed by enzymatic reactions in metabolic pathways (glycolysis, Krebs cycle, etc.).

Fluxomics complements this analysis by measuring metabolic fluxes, i.e., the actual conversion rates of metabolites in biochemical reactions. Metabolomics and fluxomics (M&F) have become essential methods for the functional study of metabolism with significant impacts in health biology, as well as in related fields such as agro-sciences and biotechnology. These two approaches require cutting-edge multidisciplinary methodological developments in biological sample preparation, analytical chemistry, statistics, and computer science.

MetaboHUB aims to provide cutting-edge technological tools and services to academic research teams and industrial partners in the fields of health, human nutrition and food, agriculture, the environment, and biotechnology.

It also has the mission to participate in the animation, coordination, and promotion of M&F in France.

MTH carries out initial and continuing training actions in collaboration with the RFMF (French Network for Metabolomics and Fluxomics), universities, and other infrastructures (e.g., Workflow4Experimenter training with IFB, the French Institute of Bioinformatics).

Finally, MTH is developing a FAIR data management and sharing policy, as illustrated by the development of the PeakForest database, opened to the community in 2022.

MTH is supported by nine academic institutions under the coordination of INRAE and currently gathers more than 150 staff members, a substantial equipment park (74 mass spectrometers, 14 nuclear magnetic resonance devices, and seven robots) distributed across five regional nodes.

Within INRAE, the MetaboHUB infrastructure unites complementary analytical tools (equipment, analytical techniques, software) and the expertise of three platforms:

• PMP-Metabolome Bordeaux,
• PFEM in Clermont-Ferrand,
• MetaToul in Toulouse.
  In addition, the MetabolomeIDF platform of Paris-Saclay, coordinated by the CEA, is included.

A single access portal (MAMA) provides access to MetaboHUB services: analysis of various biological matrices (plants, microorganisms, human cells, animal tissues and biofluids) through metabolomics and fluxomics, covering the entire project lifecycle from sample preparation to data acquisition, processing, and interpretation.

MetaboHUB is a key partner in metabolomics and fluxomics at the European and international levels: it is a partner in the European e-infrastructure PhenoMeNal, participates in IBiSBA 1.0 for biotechnology development in the industry, contributes to the Elixir infrastructure for metabolomics data, and is a founding partner of the European Metabolomics Training Consortium (EmTraG).

MetaboHUB has benefited from funding through the "Investissements d'Avenir" program.