Metabolite Profiling in Plants

Abstract

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.

Extensive Metabolic Profiles of Leaves and Stems from the Medicinal Plant Dendrobium officinale Kimura et Migo

“…are well characterized and widely used as drugs [33]. Continuous efforts to quantitatively uncover the spectrum of the primary and secondary metabolites in various plant species, in particular medicinal plants such as D. officinale , will provide prospects for finding not only novel natural sources for these well-characterized molecules but also new chemical entities for drug discovery and development [34]. The difficulty of identifying and isolating novel active compounds is the major hurdle in the traditional natural products discovery approach [35].…”

“…Our metabolic data suggest that the leaves of D. officinale could also be exploited as herbal medicine. Obtaining an extensive metabolite profile in plants has become a standard practice and represents the starting point for in-depth functional analysis of distinctly enriched compounds [34]. With the increasing genomic resources available in D. officinale , we propose that the reported metabolomic data from this study could be combined with other omics data to facilitate the elucidation of the biosynthetic pathway of important bioactive compounds.…”