Harnessing Integrated Omics Approaches for Plant Specialized Metabolism Research: New Insights into Shikonin Biosynthesis

Abstract

Plants produce an amazing diversity of specialized (secondary) metabolites, which in turn may underpin a plant’s adaptation to its specific ecological niche. Some of these metabolites have also become part of our every-day human lives—as flavorings, fragrances, insecticides, medicines and pigments. The biosynthesis of plant specialized metabolites often requires the co-regulation of underlying genes, proteins and pathway products (Schilmiller et al. 2012). Furthermore, the formation of such specialized metabolites often requires the synergism of multiple enzymes with distinct substrate and product specificities (Pichersky and Lewinsohn 2011, Yazaki et al. 2017). Armed with this knowledge, the elucidation of unknown biochemical steps and their transcriptional regulatory control is increasingly being guided by multi-omics, co-expression and integrated network analyses (see recent examples in Hao et al. 2017, Xu et al. 2017, Vannozzi et al. 2018)