Abstract
Chemical ecology elucidates the nature and role of natural products as mediators of organismal interactions. The emerging techniques that can be summarized under the concept of metabolomics provide new opportunities to study such environmentally relevant signaling molecules. Especially comparative tools in metabolomics enable the identification of compounds that are regulated during interaction situations and that might play a role as e.g. pheromones, allelochemicals or in induced and activated defenses. This approach helps overcoming limitations of traditional bioassay-guided structure elucidation approaches. But the power of metabolomics is not limited to the comparison of metabolic profiles of interacting partners. Especially the link to other -omics techniques helps to unravel not only the compounds in question but the entire biosynthetic and genetic re-wiring, required for an ecological response. This review comprehensively highlights successful applications of metabolomics in chemical ecology and discusses existing limitations of these novel techniques. It focuses on recent developments in comparative metabolomics and discusses the use of metabolomics in the systems biology of organismal interactions. It also outlines the potential of large metabolomics initiatives for model organisms in the field of chemical ecology.
Highlights
2 The comparative metabolomics approach 2.1 Comparative metabolomics in plant sciences 2.2 Comparative metabolomics in marine science 2.3 Comparative metabolomics in nematode research 2.4 Comparative metabolomics unravels pheromones in social insects 2.5 MS/MS networking in comparative metabolomics 3 The systems biology approach 4 The comprehensive metabolome approach 5 Conclusions 6 Acknowledgements 7 References
The identi cation of active metabolites opens up possibilities from fundamental work in bioassays over general investigations of the physiology and ecology of an Friedrich Schiller University, Institute of Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry, Lessingstr. 8, D-07743 Jena, Germany
This study convincingly demonstrated the multiple effects of jasmonic acid in a plant's defense and the power of metabolomics approaches to unravel such complex responses
Summary
Scheme 1 Hallmark molecules in chemical ecology that were isolated by bioassay-guided structure elucidation. Despite the fact that data mining tools were not as elaborate as today these studies enabled the investigation of regulatory patterns that allowed spotting candidate molecules or pathways relevant in species interactions Since these early days of metabolic pro ling the discipline of metabolomics has emerged and matured. Knowledge about the production of speci c compounds or classes of metabolites during interaction situations might help to make educated guesses of their function As a consequence this can motivate following bioassays to verify such hypotheses.[26] In addition, this review will cover concepts where multiple –omics techniques are combined in a systems biology approach to obtain a comprehensive picture of an organisms' response in interaction situations. We aim to classify and evaluate metabolomics as a potential future driver in the search for the nature, role and regulation of signaling molecules
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