Drought Stress and Metabolomics in Plants

Metabolomics is one of the most emerging fields of modern biology. Further this emergence is divided in to two parts. Firstly, due to metabolites production under stressed condition. It also assists plant to survive during stress. Moreover, the total metabolome generated in stressed condition help to sketch the gene expression when mutation occurred. Secondly, secondary metabolites like phenols, flavonoids, quinines, tarpenes produced under stress show antibacterial, antioxidant, anticancer activity, mainly due to presence of hydroxyl (-OH), amino (-NH2), thiol (-SH) groups. Hence, to understand plants mechanism of resistance and medicinal value of byproducts, produced under stressed condition, metabolomics of plants need to be explored. Drought is considered as the most vital stress factors in plant, which ceases plants physiological development and finally cause death. Though photosynthesis is the most widely affected phenomenon, other phenotypes like pigmentation also got affected in drought stress. Among the various scientific methods available, metabolic fingerprinting method is most commonly used to draw signaling pathways’ activated in stressed condition. Fingerprinting is usually being performed by various analytical techniques, including Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) which identifies magnetic resonance of atomic nucleus, Mass Spectrometry (MS) to determine the molecular weight and Fourier Transformed Infra Red (FTIR) spectroscopy while identifying the functional groups. As a result of a metabolic analysis the role of a gene could be defined. And the expression pathway activity could be determined with the help of omics study.