Modern Plant Metabolomics for the Discovery and Characterization of Natural Products and Their Biosynthetic Genes

Abstract Metabolomics has become an integral part of a broad understanding of the plant phenome. It involves large-scale quantitative and qualitative analyses of metabolites present in plant tissues. Metabolomics can generally be divided into targeted and non-targeted analyses. Every year, new tools are developed and used to better understand unknown metabolomes. These tools help to identify new metabolites but also increase our understanding of biosynthetic pathways that were inexplicable using only genomics data. This article reviews existing and new metabolomics tools and their integrated utility in the discovery of plant biosynthetic genes. It covers literature and data from approximately 2010–19. This article provides a basis for an average reader to understand how plant metabolites are identified, validated, and used to understand their biosynthetic origin using integrated genomics, transcriptomics, and metabolomics.