The impressive plant metabolic machinery is still hardly exploited, mainly because of the limited molecular insight into plant (secondary) metabolism.To address the current shortcomings for designing effective plant metabolic engineering strategies, a functional genomics based technology platform has been created that enables comprehensive investigations and large-scale gene discovery programs in plant metabolism.

 

The platform is built on the integration of transcriptome, proteome, interactome and metabolome profiling, which drives the design of subsequent reverse genetics screenings in plants or microorganisms. In particular, we exploit the fact that jasmonates can be employed universally across the plant kingdom to modulate both the biosynthesis of the metabolites itself, as well as the formation of the specialized producer cells or storage organs. By profiling jasmonate elicited tissues of amongst others the model plants Arabidopsis thaliana and Medicago truncatula, and medicinal plants such as Artemisia annua, Catharanthus roseus, Nicotiana tabacum, Panax ginseng, or Taxus baccata , we have built an extensive collection of thousands of genes potentially involved in all aspects of plant metabolism.

Such collections will increase our fundamental understanding of the central mechanisms that steer jasmonate signalling in the context of plant growth and metabolism. As such, they will simultaneously serve as a novel resource for (metabolic) engineering tools that will facilitate 1) sustainable production of existing or novel plant-derived molecules with superior bioactivities for the pharmaceutical, nutraceutical or agrochemical industries and 2) increased crop productivity by improvement of jasmonate-modulated traits for plant growth and defence.