Abstract: A metabonomic study for the carbon tetrachloride(CCl₄) induced liver injure and the hepato-protective effect of silybin in mice was described. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry(GC-MS) technique was used to analyze the mice metabonome both in liver tissue extraction and plasma. Orthogonal partial least square-discriminant analysis(OPLS-DA) was processed to analyze the metabonome difference between the control and CCl₄ treated samples. Twelve metabolites were selected both in mice liver tissue and plasma metabonome, respectively, via the parameter of variable importance in the projection(VIP). Principle component analysis(PCA) was employed to process the data from the preventive and therapeutic treatment of silybin for CCl₄ induced hepatotoxicity, and the hepato-protective effect of silybin was investigated through the selected responsor metabolites. The amino acids metabolism, energy metabolism and lipids metabolism were seriously disturbed after CCl4 treatment. Silybin could effectively alleviate the mitochondria dysfunction and the perturbation of amino acids metabolism. The results obtained suggest that metabonomic studies could better reflect the whole status of metabolism in bio-systems, and could be treated as a potential powerful approach in toxicological and pharmacological studies.

Key words: Metabonomics, GC-MS, Variable importance in the projection(VIP), Carbon tetrachloride, Silybin, Liver injure