Methods, applications and concepts of metabolite profiling: secondary metabolism

Plants manufacture a vast array of secondary metabolites/natural products for protection against biotic or abiotic environmental challenges. These compounds provide increased fitness due to their antimicrobial, anti-herbivory, and/or alleopathic activities. Secondary metabolites also serve fundamental roles as key signaling compounds in mutualistic interactions and plant development. Metabolic profiling and integrated functional genomics are advancing the understanding of these intriguing biosynthetic pathways and the response of these pathways to environmental challenges. This chapter provides an overview of the basic methods, select applications, and future directions of metabolic profiling of secondary metabolism. The emphasis of the application section includes the combination of primary and secondary metabolic profiling. The future directions section describes the need for increased chromatographic and mass resolution, as well as the inevitable need and benefit of spatially and temporally resolved metabolic profiling.