Metabolic Phenotyping

This chapter describes the development of metabolic phenotyping in biomedical research, providing a critical review of methodologies for air flow management, multiplexed versus continuous sampling, and the interaction between the cage time constant and sampling interval. The fact that the temporal resolution of a system is generally limited primarily by the cage time constant rather than the sampling interval is validated and emphasized. Sensor technologies and their associated analytical approaches for food and water intake, body mass, wheel running, and position/activity measurement are described with examples. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the synergistic role of behavior analysis in metabolic phenotyping.