Rapid in situ 13C tracing of sucrose utilization in Arabidopsis sink and source leaves

Background Conventional metabolomics approaches face the problem of hidden metabolic phenotypes where only fluxes are altered but pool sizes stay constant. Metabolic flux experiments are used to detect such hidden flux phenotypes. These experiments are, however, time consuming, may be cost intensive, and involve specialists for modeling. We fill the gap between conventional metabolomics and flux modeling. We present rapid stable isotope tracing assays and analysis strategies of 13C labeling data. For this purpose, we combine the conventional metabolomics approach that detects significant relative changes of metabolite pool sizes with analyses of differential utilization of 13C labeled carbon. As a test case, we use uniformly labeled 13C-sucrose.