14 - Omics technologies for agricultural microbiology research

Abstract

Plant-microbe relation has been an area of intensive research in plant science. It has far-reaching impacts, be it the plant pathogen interplay or the symbiotic relationships between plants and symbionts. A gene or gene product-centric approach has been used traditionally in the study of such relationships, which is time-consuming and less amenable for scaling up. Advances in modern molecular tools allow the comprehensive and all-encompassing analysis of the molecules present inside cells or tissue at a particular time and under a set of conditions. Such tools include genomics for the whole DNA analysis. It provides information about the potential of an organism. The transcriptome for the RNA analysis and proteome for the protein provide a snapshot of the informational molecules at work. Different gene(s) and their products involved in signaling and other pathways have been identified using this approach. Metabolomics deals with metabolite analysis, which is the ultimate product and representative of the current metabolic state. It often provides a lead into the effect of a change in levels of expression of a particular pathway. Integrating data generated from these is another emerging strategy to use data from all these “omics” tools. This book chapter aims to summarize the current technologies being used and highlights recent studies done using these tools.