Analysis of Primary and Secondary Plant Metabolites
A special issue of Molecules (ISSN 1420-3049). This special issue belongs to the section "Analytical Chemistry".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2021) | Viewed by 723
Special Issue Editor
Interests: plant hormones; plant nutrition; responses of primary and secondary plant metabolism to plant nutrition; orphan crops; analytical methods including HPLC; UHPLC; GC; mass spectrometry; optical spectroscopy; electrophoresis and quantitative PCR; separation and analysis of chiral molecules; enzyme assays; inhibitors
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Plants serve as food for humans and livestock, are used as spices and herbs, and are raw materials for the production of chemicals including fragrances, dyes, drugs, and insecticides. However, the content of nutrients and other primary and secondary metabolites is highly dependent on growth conditions and crop varieties. In addition, plant pathogens, adverse climatic conditions, or pollination with other varieties may cause the accumulation of off-flavors and even toxic compounds. Thus, detailed knowledge of the chemical composition of plants is crucial for the quality control of food and for applications where plants serve as raw materials in industrial processes. Moreover, knowledge about the levels and fluxes of metabolites is vital for improving our understanding of plant metabolism.
Due to the huge number of metabolites, plant material is a highly complex matrix. Thus, appropriate methods for extraction are crucial for reliable metabolite analysis. The extraction efficiency should be as high as possible, while chemical and enzymatic reactions modifying metabolites (e.g., oxidation and hydrolysis) should be kept at a minimum. In some cases, the pre-fractionation of extracts, for instance by liquid–liquid or solid-phase extraction, is useful—particularly for the analysis of minor constituents. For the quantification of such compounds, the combination of chromatographic techniques with mass spectrometry has proven to be particularly suitable. In addition, GC-MS and LC-MS techniques are also capable of quantifying hundreds of compounds in a single run, which makes it possible to obtain a comprehensive picture of the metabolites present in plant tissue. Nevertheless, despite the tremendous progress that has been made in such techniques, the reliable identification and quantification of compounds remain challenging, particularly in non-targeted approaches. In addition, there is a high demand for simple and cost-efficient methods for quality assessment and for high-throughput screening, for instance for the identification of mutants with desired traits. In addition to chromatographic techniques, spectroscopic, electrophoretic, and enzymatic methods have been shown to be highly promising for such applications. The huge data volume obtained with current analytical methods, for instance metabolomic approaches and high-throughput techniques, can be challenging for data handling, analysis, interpretation, and visualization, and for making such data sets permanently publicly available.
Original research articles, short communications, and reviews addressing the aforementioned or similar topics are considered attractive contributions for this Special Issue.
Prof. Dr. Wilfried Rozhon
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- Primary and secondary metabolism
- Chromatography
- HPLC
- UHPLC
- Mass spectrometry
- Spectroscopy
- Enzymatic methods
- Electrophoresis
- High-throughput analysis
- Data analysis
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