Metabolomics Analysis of Plant-Fungal Interactions

When plants are infested with pathogenic fungi, resistance is usually enhanced by regulating metabolites in vivo, and metabolomics techniques are used as a complementary technique to other histological techniques to reveal the mechanism of plant-fungal interactions. By analyzing the changes and differences in the metabolic profile of plants after fungal infestation through metabolomics techniques, a series of disease-resistance-related metabolites can be searched for. These disease-resistance-associated metabolites can help study plant disease resistance mechanism and plant resistance identification and integrate various histological analysis techniques to effectively identify functional genes involved in plant metabolic processes.

Lifeasible can analyze the antifungal effect of plant metabolites based on metabolomics technology and help customers to screen for disease resistance genes in combination with gene expression studies, providing an auxiliary role for plant breeding for disease resistance.

Figure 1. From genomics to metabolomics, the multiple strategies for discovering unknown fungal secondary metabolites. (Hautbergue T, et al., 2018)

• Analysis and identification of metabolites. The metabolites synthesized and accumulated in tissues, organs, and cells of plants differ at different periods of growth and development. Based on the constructed plant-fungal interaction system, we extract plant metabolites according to the needs of our customers. We use various metabolomics techniques to analyze the changes in metabolite profiles after plant-fungus interactions, followed by metabolite identification through metabolomics databases and literature comparison.
• Analysis of resistance-related metabolites. There are significant differences in metabolites in plants with different levels of resistance when infested with pathogenic fungi. We can help our customers screen for differential metabolites using a range of statistical analysis methods. For plants with different resistant varieties already available, we searched for resistant-related metabolites by comparing the changes in the content of differential metabolites after infection with pathogenic fungi in resistant and susceptible varieties. For plants with no resistant varieties at the moment, we identified resistant-related metabolites by analyzing the metabolite changes between pathogen inoculation and mock inoculation groups.

  We offer the following analytical methods for differential metabolite screening.

  • Principal component analysis.
  • Partial least squares discriminant analysis.
  • Orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis.
• Analysis of resistance-related secondary metabolites. Secondary metabolites not only act as signaling substances to induce the production of downstream antifungal substances during plant defense but also can be directly involved in the suppression of pathogenic bacteria. We help our customers to screen for secondary metabolites with antifungal effects through signal detection in chromatograms and detection of biological effects.
• Analysis of changes in metabolic pathways. The metabolomic analysis can detect changes in small molecule metabolites produced by plants after infection with pathogenic fungi and fine-tune metabolic pathway changes. We study pathogenic fungal metabolic pathways and gene function by analyzing complex systems composed of disease-resistant or disease-susceptible plants and virulent or non-virulent producing fungi.

Lifeasible can help customers screen plant metabolites with antifungal effects through metabolomics technology. As your trusted partner, we can meet all your fungal metabolomics analysis needs and provide you with efficient and high-quality services. If you want to know the details, please contact us.