Advancing Food and Nutrition Science with Mass Spectrometry (MS)-Based Omics: From Technical Innovation to Translational Impact

Mass spectrometry (MS)-based omics such as metabolomics, proteomics, and lipidomics are powerful technologies that have been applied to advance many scientific fields. While these technologies have been applied successfully in food, nutrition, and human health research, much of their potential remains untapped in these interconnected areas. Our diet and agricultural practices shape both human and planetary health, making this a pivotal moment to use MS-based omics to uncover the molecular composition of foods and identify bioactive compounds. These insights can then be translated into actionable knowledge to guide agriculture, nutrition, and public health.

This Research Topic aims to highlight the advancement and application of MS-based omics in food and nutrition research, emphasizing both methodological innovation and translational impact. We welcome contributions that either advance MS-based omics methodologies or apply these approaches to drive progress in food, nutrition, and diet-intervention research. Technical papers that integrate chemometrics, computational modeling, or systems-level analyses to interpret complex food and nutrition datasets are particularly encouraged. We also seek contributors that demonstrate the utility of MS-driven omics to address pressing challenges in human and planetary health, including sustainable diets, personalized nutrition, and evidence-based dietary interventions. By bringing together interdisciplinary research that bridges analytical innovation with applied nutrition, this Research Topic will serve as a platform for advancing the understanding of food systems and their influence on health at both molecular and population scales.

This Research Topic focuses on MS-based omics in food and nutrition research.

Topics in scope include:
• Methodological innovations in MS-based omics for food and/or nutrition analysis.
• MS-based omics profiling of food composition and human material (e.g. plasma/serum), including identification of bioactive or other compounds or biomarkers of exposure.
• Technological advancements for chemometrics, computational modeling, or systems-level analyses that support MS-based omics applications to food, nutrition, or clinical applications.
• Diet-intervention studies leveraging MS-based omics data to characterize nutritional or health outcomes.
• Applications addressing human and planetary health challenges, including sustainable diets and personalized nutrition.

Topics outside of the scope include:
• Research that does not have implications for food, nutrition, and dietary intervention studies.
• Microbiota, transcriptomics or genome sequencing that does not also feature some MS-based omics analysis.

The types of article submissions that will be considered are limited to: Original Research, Systematic Reviews, Methods, Review, Mini Review, Perspective, Clinical Trial, and Brief Research Report.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Clinical Trial
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Mass Spectrometry, Nutrition, Metabolomics, Lipidomics, Proteomics

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.