Metabolomics and its role in understanding cellular responses in plants

A natural shift is taking place in the approaches being adopted by plant scientists in response to the accessibility of systems-based technology platforms. Metabolomics is one such field, which involves a comprehensive non-biased analysis of metabolites in a given cell at a specific time. This review briefly introduces the emerging field and a range of analytical techniques that are most useful in metabolomics when combined with computational approaches in data analyses. Using cases from Arabidopsis and other selected plant systems, this review highlights how information can be integrated from metabolomics and other functional genomics platforms to obtain a global picture of plant cellular responses. We discuss how metabolomics is enabling large-scale and parallel interrogation of cell states under different stages of development and defined environmental conditions to uncover novel interactions among various pathways. Finally, we discuss selected applications of metabolomics. This special review article is dedicated to the commemoration of the retirement of Dr. Oluf L. Gamborg after 25 years of service as Founding Managing Editor of Plant Cell Reports. RB and KN have contributed equally to this review.