Gaining insight into plant responses to beneficial and pathogenic microorganisms using metabolomic and transcriptomic approaches

Abstract

Plants are constantly interacting with microorganisms. Many of them have the potential to cause disease, while many other may establish beneficial interactions where plants enhance their ability to incorporate important nutrients and improve disease resistance. During these interactions, plants must regulate the expression of thousands of genes, which ultimately triggers distinct hormonal signaling pathways and affects the concentration of numerous metabolites. Transcriptomics and metabolomics have played a pivotal role in identifying the genes and metabolites involved in such responses, which has given crucial hints to refine our current strategies for plant protection and crop yield improvement. However, there is still a gap on our knowledge on many features that distinguish the interplay between plants and microorganisms. This chapter initially discusses the contributions of these high-throughput technologies to the understanding of this field of research and ends with future prospects in the search for interaction-specific biomarker genes and metabolites.