Metabolomics Using Fourier Transform Ion Cyclotron Mass Spectrometry
2: Comprehensive Analyses for Metabolites of Arabidopsis Treated with Inhibitors

Abstract

Metabolic profiling (metabolomics) has emerged as a new research area in functional genomics and is expected to provide biochemical information for identifying physiological roles of novel genes of unknown functions. In this report, we treated Arabidopsis seedlings with known enzyme inhibitors (active ingredients of commercial herbicides) and analyzed the changes in metabolic profiles in such herbicide-treated Arabidopsis tissues using our FT-ICR MS metabolomics platform. After mass correction by internal standards, acquired data was subjected to PCA, and the Arabidopsis metabolites were classified into several herbicide-treated metabolome clusters. Analyses of T-DNA insertion mutants for the herbicide target enzymes are also underway. We discuss potential to use the FT-ICR MS metabolomics platform as a new tool for finding novel enzyme inhibitors or characterization of genes of unknown functions.