What do we understand by a biomarker?

A biomarker is a measurement taken at a certain level (such as molecular or cellular) to organisms (such as animals) that allow us to objectively identify any physiological process.

This definition seems complicated to understand, but it is simpler than it seems. We give a simple example, everyone knows that eating foods with sugar (glucose) increases blood glucose levels. In this case, it could be that, without knowing what two animals have or have not eaten, if we measure glucose levels, we can know if they have eaten more/less. This would be an example of a biomarker.

This simple example can be complicated as much as we want. Currently the use of precision sciences (precision medicine, precision nutrition, among others) use biomarkers for different purposes, for example to assign a certain medical treatment or another. In this way, we can try to discover biomarkers that determine nutritional and health status, thermal stress, climate change, among others.

Returning to the topic of our website, we recommend reviewing the Ecometabolomics entry, where this tool that can be used for biomarker prospecting is explained.