Potential of metabolomics as a functional genomics tool

Metabolomics is developing as an important functional genomics tool; however, there is still room for technical improvements in both the large-scale determination of metabolites from complex plant tissues and the dissemination of metabolomics research data. For the continued maturation of metabolomics, the following three objectives need to be achieved: (i) improvement in the comprehensive coverage of the plant metabolome, (ii) facilitation of comparison of results between laboratories and experiments, and (iii) enhancement of the integration of metabolomic data with other functional genomic information. Because these challenges are widely recognized and endorsed, we propose community-based efforts to define common criteria and to initiate concerted actions directed towards the release of standard reference materials, construction of consolidated metabolite libraries, and development of metabolite-specific data-management systems.