Review: A complete guide to metabolomics

This review by Rai et al., part of a focus collection on metabolism, comprehensively covers the role of metabolomics in plant biology: its history, its tools and techniques, and its impact. As the authors point out, metabolomics bridge the gap between genotype and phenotype by providing a direct readout of what is happening at the molecular level in cells. As many plant adaptions to biotic and abiotic stresses involved specialized metabolites, plants are particularly diverse in their metabolomes, so the authors survey some knowns and unknowns by type of plant, starting with Arabidopsis and moving into crops and medicinal plants. They also provide a nice historical timeline of the rapidly moving field of metabolomics and it how it synergizes with genomics and trancriptomics, as well as links to a large number of tools and databases that are available. They conclude with a look the exciting applications of new methods that are being employed such as single-cell metabolomics and imaging mass spectroscopy, and highlight the need for standardization in methodologies and data reporting. (Summary by Mary Williams @PlantTeaching.bsky.social) Plant Physiol. 10.1093/plphys/kiaf408