Metabolic profiling and biochemical phenotyping of plant systems

Over the last two decades incredible progress has been made in the development of technologies to both create and characterise genetic diversity. In plant systems, the development of knockout populations, transposon insertions and chemical mutagenesis programs has facilitated the generation of an enormous base of diversity. During this period, the elucidation of complete genomes and the rapid development of tools to describe the expression of genes and the protein complement have also been achieved. To complement such studies, methods allowing non-biased, simultaneous and rapid determination of metabolites important in both primary and secondary metabolism have been developed. Our intention here is to review current methodologies for metabolic profiling in plants, highlighting the strategies for biochemical phenotyping of plants by determining the steady-state concentrations of a broad spectrum of metabolites. Emphasis will be placed on cells cultured in vitro, and the future prospects of this rapidly expanding research field will be discussed.