代谢组学在研究茶叶品质形成中的应用

代谢组学作为系统生物学的一个重要分支,主要研究生物体系受内外环境扰动后（基因的改变或环境的变化）产生的小分子代谢物的变化,目前已被广泛应用于药理学、植物学、微生物学和食品安全等研究领域。近年茶树的代谢组研究也取得了突破性进展。本文就植物代谢组学技术在茶树生长发育、茶叶加工过程的品质形成、茶叶功能性评价等方面研究中的应用现状进行了综述。认为代谢组学技术将在茶叶品质形成及调控、茶树基因功能注释、茶树良种选育、揭示代谢网络调控机理等研究方面发挥不可替代的作用。

Metabolomics Application in the Study of Tea Quality Formation

Metabolomics, an important branch of systems biology, mainly study the changes of small molecule metabolites affected by the internal and external environments (gene or environmental changes). Metabolomics has been widely applied in the field of natural medicine development, botany, microbiology and food safety researches. The application of metabolomics in tea science has also been developed rapidly in recent years. In this article, the application of metabolomics in three major aspects of tea researches (growth and development, the quality formation during processing and the evaluation of tea function) was reviewed and discussed. We believed that metabolomics would play an irreplaceable role in the analysis of gene function, the regulation of metabolic network, the cultivation and the quality improvement in tea.