Applications of Metabolomics in Assessing Ecological Effects of Emerging Contaminants and Pollutants on Plants

Dear Colleagues,

Environmental contaminants such as nanomaterials, synthetic drugs and chemicals, natural toxins, personal care products, pesticides, fertilizers, natural wastes, and heavy metals have apparent effects on the metabolome of living systems. Due to their sessile nature, plants are profoundly affected by these environmental contaminants. Ecotoxic compounds can exert changes in the primary (proteins, carbohydrates, organic acids, lipids, nucleotides, etc.) and secondary metabolite (flavonoids, alkaloids, phenolics, glucosinolates, tannins, glycosides, etc.) profiles of plants. To cope with environmental stressors, plants can produce various secondary metabolites. Metabolomics is the most robust approach to determining the modifications in the metabolite profile of living systems, and metabolic profiling is effectively determined with the help of mass spectrometry methods such as HPLC, NMR, and LC-MS. In the past decade, metabolomics has provided insight into the metabolisms of biological systems and the biochemistry of their ecology. Metabolomics attributes an improved knowledge of the impacts of these ecotoxicants on living systems, providing morphological and biological information in a high-throughput way. Furthermore, the progress in the instrumentation and evolution of databases will improve the utilization of metabolomics.

This Special Issue of Metabolites will be dedicated to the collection of both original research and review articles dealing with the application of metabolomics in ecotoxicology in laboratory and field-based investigations. This Special Issue focuses on recent applications of metabolomics to determine the environmental impacts of numerous environmental perturbations, comprising nanomaterials, pharmaceuticals, microbial and other natural contaminants, personal care products, fertilizers, pesticides, and heavy metals, on plant metabolomes. Manuscripts associated with other challenging problems are also highly desired.

Dr. Venkidasamy Baskar
Dr. Muthu Thiruvengadam
Dr. Kavita Sharma
Dr. Rajakumar Govindasamy
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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