Abstract
Plants produce numerous structurally and functionally diverse signaling metabolites, yet only relatively small fractions of which have been discovered. Multi-omics has greatly expedited the discovery as evidenced by increasing recent works reporting new plant signaling molecules and relevant functions via integrated multi-omics techniques. The effective application of multi-omics tools is the key to uncovering unknown plant signaling molecules. This review covers the features of multi-omics in the context of plant signaling metabolite discovery, highlighting how multi-omics addresses relevant aspects of the challenges as follows: (a) unknown functions of known metabolites; (b) unknown metabolites with known functions; (c) unknown metabolites and unknown functions. Based on the problem-oriented overview of the theoretical and application aspects of multi-omics, current limitations and future development of multi-omics in discovering plant signaling metabolites are also discussed.
Highlights
Small molecules produced by plants play vastly diverse roles in nature, amongst which signaling and communication are two of the most important aspects
Primary metabolites are ubiquitous to all plants whereas secondary metabolites are produced by certain plants, tissues and cells and in most cases elicited under certain conditions
There are a few major challenges impeding the discovery of plant signaling molecules: (i) the content of plant signaling metabolites are usually very low; (ii) plant signaling metabolites are often under dynamic metabolism; (iii) plant signaling metabolites normally have characteristic spatial–temporal distributions; (iv) they have extremely diverse physical and chemical properties that demand customized analytical and assay methods; (v) they have diverse specialized functions that can only be captured under specific spatial and temporal conditions
Summary
Small molecules produced by plants play vastly diverse roles in nature, amongst which signaling and communication are two of the most important aspects. There are a few major challenges impeding the discovery of plant signaling molecules: (i) the content of plant signaling metabolites are usually very low; (ii) plant signaling metabolites are often under dynamic metabolism (i.e., they are actively being synthesized as well as being catabolized and secreted); (iii) plant signaling metabolites normally have characteristic spatial–temporal distributions (they can respond to the upstream signal transduction cascade, including those from the environment, growth and developmental programs at specific stages); (iv) they have extremely diverse physical and chemical properties that demand customized analytical and assay methods; (v) they have diverse specialized functions that can only be captured under specific spatial and temporal conditions. The difficulties in discovering plant sign3aolfin17g metabolites under these three scenarios vary
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