Plant metabolomics is not ripe for environmental risk assessment

摘要

Metabolomics separates and detects small molecules and helps determine the composition of plant materials. This makes it appear to be a possible contributor to environmental risk assessment (ERA) of transgenic plants. Here we argue that, despite important advances in the technology, limited annotation and our limited knowledge of the role of metabolites in plant-environment interactions means that metabolomics is not yet ripe for ERA.