Plant iron deficiency metabolomics

Abstract

Metabolites are the end products of cellular regulatory processes, andtheir levels can be regarded as the ultimate response of biological systems to genetic or environmental changes. In parallel to the terms ‘transcriptome’ and ‘proteome’, the set of metabolites synthesized by abiological system constitute its ‘metabolome’. Yet, unlike other functional genomics approaches, the unbiased simultaneous identification and quantification of plant metabolites has been largely neglected. Fe deficiency lead to important changes in the plant metabolism, due to reduced photosynthetic rates that affects the C incorporation. The whole plant adapts to this situation by finding alternative ways to maintain the metabolic activity. The aim was to study the metabolic changes of sugar beet root tips and leaves, and tomato xylem under different Fe nutrition status.