Abstract
Metabolomics, the youngest sibling in the family of omics fields, has become an indispensable tool in studying plant biology. Considering that the metabolome is expectedly found to be sensitive to perturbations in both metabolic fluxes and enzyme activity, metabolomics provides insights into the physiological state and biological activities of an organism as influenced by changes in gene expression, protein function modulation and environmental cues. In plant science studies, the coordinated regulatory mechanisms underlying the immune responses of a biological system to biotic stresses can therefore be investigated by untargeted metabolomics approaches. The use of advanced analytical platforms such as LC-MS in untargeted plant metabolomics approaches facilitates a comprehensive measurement of metabolites, spanning an array of classes of these small-molecules. Such analyses, complemented with data analysis methodologies, thus reveal the molecular dynamics of the plant defence responses as well as biomakers associated with resistance state to an environmental stress. The capacity of a plant to launch an effective defensive state depends on the ability to perceive the pathogen presence (via MAMP perception) and timeous defence response activation. Upon pathogen detection, plant hormones such as the salicylates and jasmonates play key roles (working synergistically or antagonistically) to activate an array of highly regulated and coordinated defence events, involving a reprogramming of the metabolome, reflected through activation and changes in defence-related secondary metabolites and precursors for cell wall reinforcement...
M.Sc. (Biochemistry)