Editorial: Targeted and untargeted metabolomics for the evaluation of plant metabolites in response to the environment

Abstract

Over 200 thousand unique metabolites constitute the extremely intricate and diverse plant metabolome (Sousa Silva et al., 2019). Understanding plant growth, development, and responses to environmental perturbations largely rely on the identification and characterization of these diverse metabolites (Allwood et al., 2021). Metabolomics allows the comprehensive study of the complex biochemistry of plant-environment interactions, enabling researchers to better understand plant growth as well as stress responses (Wu et al., 2023). Thus, applications of metabolomics to plant science hold tremendous promise. Metabolomics can broadly be classified into un-targeted and targeted metabolomics (Allwood et al., 2021). Untargeted metabolomics attempts to analyze all detectable metabolites from the sample, including unknown compounds (Christ et al., 2018). However, targeted metabolomics focuses on the analysis of specific categories of metabolites with more selectivity and sensitivity (Roberts et al., 2012). Nonetheless, both un-targeted and targeted metabolomics have benefits and drawbacks, and they are often employed together to detect and precisely quantify diverse metabolites (Allwood et al., 2021;Wu et al., 2023). Currently, multiple analytical platforms allow both targeted metabolite profiling and untargeted metabolic fingerprinting using different strategies. This Research Topic is a compilation of 5 research articles that highlight the state-of-theart and cutting-edge methods of metabolomics in plant research.Light, one of the most important environmental factors for plants, not only drives photosynthesis but also alters the nutritional contents and compositions of edible plant products (Xu et al., 2021;Ahammed et al., 2022). Grape (Vitis vinifera L.) berry seeds are rich in oil content and have nutraceutical and pharmacological values. Interestingly, grape seeds are capable to continue photosynthetic activity even at the mature stage (Garrido et al., 2021). Garrido et al. followed an untargeted metabolomics approach using liquid chromatography coupled with high-resolution mass spectrometry (LC-MS) to analyze the Frontiers in Plant Science frontiersin.org 01

Metabolomics reveal root differential metabolites of different root-type alfalfa under drought stress

“…Metabolites not only control changes in plant phenotype but also serve as a bridge between phenotype and gene relationships ( Yang et al., 2019 ). Metabolomics can reflect changes in metabolites and reveal the reaction mechanisms of plants to stressful conditions, which is a useful technique for studying plant environmental stress ( Han et al., 2023 ). The same is true for secondary metabolites, which are indispensable to plant signaling, defense, and safety ( Savoi et al., 2016 ; Kumar et al., 2021 ; Nicolas-Espinosa et al., 2023 ).…”

Integrating Targeted Metabolomics and Targeted Proteomics to Study the Responses of Wheat Plants to Engineered Nanomaterials

“…The existing multiomics investigations have primarily employed untargeted approaches, enabling a broad and comprehensive view at each level of omics analysis. However, untargeted approaches have limitations in terms of accuracy, sensitivity, and reproducibility compared to targeted methods, which focus on specific molecules or pathways of interest. − Thus, in our study, we opted to utilize our previous optimized targeted metabolomics and targeted proteomics approaches. We aimed to investigate the specific molecular responses of plants to ENMs at both the protein and metabolite levels.…”