Department of Plant Physiology, Umeå University 907 36, Umeå, Sweden.
Physiol Plant. 2020 Mar;168(3):529-530. doi: 10.1111/ppl.13071.
Efforts to decipher the processes underpinning biological systems now have a plethora of approaches from which to choose. Transcriptomics and proteomics provide a global snapshot of the abundance of gene products in a sample, from which researchers can learn a great deal about the inner machinations of a cell. However, when attempting to piece together a roadmap of an organism's metabolism, these strategies illuminate only a portion of the cellular landscape, and the evidence provided is often once- or even twice-removed from the actual players (the metabolites) involved. In this issue of Physiologia Plantarum, Jia et al. (2020) used metabolomic approaches to directly analyse the molecular soup of substrates and products contained in plant cells (known as the metabolome) to unravel the metabolic and physiological differences separating a drought-sensitive and a drought-tolerant species of the ecologically and economically important woody plant, poplar.
如今，人们试图破解生物系统背后的过程，有多种方法可供选择。转录组学和蛋白质组学为样本中基因产物的丰度提供了全局快照，研究人员可以从中了解细胞内部运作的很多信息。然而，当试图构建生物体代谢的路线图时，这些策略只能揭示细胞景观的一部分，而且提供的证据往往与实际参与者（代谢物）相隔甚远。在本期《植物生理学》中，Jia 等人（2020 年）使用代谢组学方法直接分析植物细胞中包含的底物和产物的分子混合物（称为代谢组），以揭示区分生态和经济上重要的木本植物杨树的耐旱敏感和耐旱物种的代谢和生理差异。
