Omic Relief for the Biotically Stressed: Metabolomics of Plant Biotic Interactions

Many aspects of the way plants protect themselves against pathogen attack, or react upon such an attack, are realized by metabolites. The ambitious aim of metabolomics, namely the identification and annotation of the entire cellular metabolome, still poses a considerable challenge due to the high diversity of the metabolites in the cell. Recent advances in analytical methods and data analysis have resulted in improved sensitivity, accuracy, and capacity, allowing the analysis of several hundreds or even thousands of compounds within one sample. Investigators have only recently begun to acknowledge and harness the power of metabolomics to elucidate key questions in the study of plant biotic interactions; we review trends and developments in the field.

TrendsThe field of metabolomics is advancing rapidly: machines and platforms are becoming more accurate and sensitive, and public metabolite databases enable improved annotation.Practices previously considered novel or excessive are gradually becoming the norm: these include the use of multiple analytical approaches in parallel in a single study, the metabolomic analysis of single cells, high-resolution time-course metabolomic analyses, metabolomic profiling of samples from nature, and increasingly seamless integration of different types of omics data.Metabolomics has become a tool that is now routinely used to address specific topics relating to plant biotic interactions, including systemic acquired resistance, induced resistance, multiple stresses, allelopathy, and more.Metabolomics is becoming a prominent tool for elucidating the underlying mechanisms.