Metabolite Profiling in Plants

Advances in analytical chemistry, computation and biotechnology have led to the recent development of methodologies for broad metabolite profiling. Metabolomics now plays a significant role in fundamental plant biology and applied biotechnology. The study of plant metabolism has been one of the first beneficiaries of these technologies, and applications have focused on plant metabolite engineering, functional genomics and physiology. Metabolomics has gained importance in biotechnology applications, as exemplified by quantitative loci analysis. Integration of different broad-range metabolite profiling into genomics approaches (system biology) driven by metabolome data will bring a change in our understanding of the regulation of metabolic networks and, therefore, facilitate improvements in our understanding of plant breeding. Key Concepts Metabolomics is defined as the quantitative complement of low-molecular-weight metabolites present in a cell under a given set of physiological conditions. Systems biology is the combination of molecular and system-level studies applying a synergistic approach involving modelling, theory and experiment. Metabolite marker is a metabolite that is objectively measured and evaluated as an indicator of normal biological processes or specific trait. Metabolic phenotype is the products of interactions among a variety of factors such as environment or genetic perturbation. Functional genomics is the field of molecular biology that uses many possible approaches (i.e. genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics) to understand the properties and function of the entirety of an organism's genes and gene products. Keywords: metabolite profiling; metabolomics; metabolism; functional genomics; mass spectrometry