Plant Metabolomics Analysis: Revealing Plants Secrets
- 21st September 2023
- Posted by: Breige McBride
- Category: Metabolomics
Put simply, plant metabolomics helps us understand how plants work.
The term ‘metabolomics’ refers to the study of metabolites in a biofluid, tissue, cell or organism. Many people think of metabolites as ‘small molecules’. However, metabolites are actually any substance that an organism uses or creates when breaking down food, chemicals, tissue or drugs.
Therefore, plant metabolomics refers to the study of metabolites in plants, i.e. the substances the plant uses or creates when breaking down food or certain chemicals. In fact, plant metabolomics allows us to take a snapshot of a plant’s metabolism (all the chemical reactions taking place inside the plant). This means we can study the metabolites that a plant produces, such as sugars and amino acids, and figure out why it is producing them.
What are the applications of plant metabolomics?
Plant metabolomics is such an important research area because it has various applications, such as:
Medicinal plant discovery
We all know that plants have compounds we can use in medicine. Using plant metabolomics, we can not only identify those active compounds, we can also figure out how to make more of them.
Improving crop quality
Researchers can use plant metabolomics to help breeders and farmers improve their crops. This is because studying the metabolites produced by crops helps researchers to identify crops with specific qualities that are suitable for breeding or engineering. For example, crops can be improved to provide more nutrients, or to be more pest-resistant.
Learning about plant health
A further application is to learn about plant health. Analysing a plant’s metabolites can tell us how healthy or stressed it is. For example, when a plant suffers from drought stress, its metabolites change, and using plant metabolomics allows us to detect that.
Monitoring the environment
By analysing the metabolites in plants we can also determine how they are responding to environmental changes such as pollution and climate changes. This enables us to recognize the presence of certain metabolites in plants as biomarkers. These biomarkers can indicate different things about the plant’s environment. For example, if the plant’s soil is polluted.
Plant metabolomics analysis: revealing plants secrets
To understand what a plant’s metabolites are and what they are telling us, we have to generate plant metabolomics data and analyse it.
How To Generate Plant Metabolomics Data
To generate plant metabolomics data, researchers collect plant tissues such as leaves, stems, roots or seeds. Then they clean the tissue samples of any contaminants using distilled water, before freezing them. Freezing the plant tissues stops their metabolic processes which preserves the metabolite profile the tissue had when it was alive. The researchers then grind the frozen tissues into a fine powder as this breaks down the plants cells, making it easier to extract metabolites. To extract the metabolites, the plant powder is mixed with a solvent and shaken or vortexed.
The resulting liquid then spins in a centrifuge to separate the liquid extract (containing metabolites) from solid debris or plant cell remnants. After this, the liquid extract goes through a filtration process to remove any remaining solid particles. The samples are then subjected to various analytical methods. For example, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, mass spectrometry coupled with high-performance liquid chromatography, or capillary electrophoresis etc. in order to generate data. This data can then be analysed to reveal the plant’s secrets.
Analysing plant metabolomics data
Plant metabolomics data analysis allows us to identify and quantify a plant’s metabolites. We can use this information to reveal insights about the plant. For example, how healthy it is, what sort of environment it is from, or if it has active compounds that could be suitable for use in medicine.
However, the metabolomics data from plants can be vast and complex, and bioinformatics approaches are necessary to analyse it. As a leading bioinformatics provider with over 15 years of experience, Fios Genomics has the tools and expertise to quickly make sense of this data, revealing the insights hidden within it that will advance your research. If you would like to discuss a plant metabolomics analysis project, contact us and we will be happy to help!
Or, to learn more about our metabolomics analysis services and projects we have supported, such as conducting a time series analysis of metabolic stress in plants, visit our metabolomics data analysis information page.
Further reading:
Plant metabolome study: emerging tools and techniques
Metabolomics for plant improvement: status and prospects
Mass spectrometry as a quantitative tool in plant metabolomics
See also:
Agriculture bioinformatics: advancing agriculture research
