基于全基因关联分析的代谢组学在植物中的应用

植物代谢物是人类食物和营养物质的重要来源。代谢组学是对生物体内代谢物进行定量和定性分析,研究代谢物合成和调控机制的一门新兴学科。基于代谢组的全基因组关联分析（metabolome-based genome-wide association study,mGWAS）是将代谢组数据作为表型,与基因型数据进行关联分析的一种方法。概述了近几年利用mGWAS技术在植物代谢调控网络研究、初生和次生代谢物的形成机制、代谢物在植物生长发育和胁迫应答中的作用,同时综述了mGWAS在代谢物相关候选基因的定位和调控营养、品质相关代谢通路的挖掘,为深入了解植物代谢物合成调控的遗传机制奠定基础。     

Recent applications of metabolomics in plant breeding

Metabolites play a central role in maintaining organismal life and in defining crop phenotypes, such as nutritional value, fragrance, color, and stress resistance. Among the ‘omes’ in biology, the metabolome is the closest to the phenotype. Consequently, metabolomics has been applied to crop improvement as method for monitoring changes in chemical compositions, clarifying the mechanisms underlying cellular functions, discovering markers and diagnostics, and phenotyping for mQTL, mGWAS, and metabolite-genome predictions. In this review, 359 reports of the most recent applications of metabolomics to plant breeding-related studies were examined. In addition to the major crops, more than 160 other crops including rare medicinal plants were considered. One bottleneck associated with using metabolomics is the wide array of instruments that are used to obtain data and the ambiguity associated with metabolite identification and quantification. To further the application of metabolomics to plant breeding, the features and perspectives of the technology are discussed.