Ecometabolomics and Plant Response to Climate Change
Noure Benkeblia, Professor of Crop Science; Dr. Sci., Dr. Agr., JP Department of Life Sciences / Caribbean Centre for Research in Bioscience (CCRIB)
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05/12/2025
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With over 400,000 metabolites estimated in plant species, metabolomics is being considered as a promising tool that revealed its efficiency to study the complete set of small naturally present or stresses elicited metabolites. The study led to a comprehensive analysis of metabolites and metabolic pathways in plant tissues. The relatively new research discipline of Eco-Metabolomics is the application of metabolomics techniques to ecology with the aim to characterize biochemical interactions of organisms across different spatial and temporal scales. This experimental high-throughput analysis of molecular networks is considered a central approach to characterize the adaptation of plant metabolism to the change in the environment in particular rising temperatures and carbon dioxide enrichment of the atmosphere.
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- [00:00:00.320]The following presentation is part of the Agronomy and Horticulture Seminar Series at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
- [00:00:07.740]Okay, welcome to the 13th seminar of the series. Grab some food in the back if you haven't yet.
- [00:00:15.260]It's a real pleasure and honor for me to introduce a colleague from the University of West Indies in Mona, Mona campus.
- [00:00:22.520]They have three campuses in Jamaica, and quite a network of researchers in the Caribbean, working together with other islands, other universities.
- [00:00:33.060]Dr. Noure Benkeblia is native of Algeria.
- [00:00:40.080]He did his first three degrees in Algeria at the university, then went to Japan and got another doctorate degree in Japan,
- [00:00:49.240]and has been at...
- [00:00:52.240]He's done postdocs in the U.S. and Canada and various places, but he's been at MONA, the campus in Jamaica, since 19...
- [00:01:03.240]2008.
- [00:01:04.160]2008, okay. Almost 20 years.
- [00:01:07.860]And his specialty is in horticultural crops and climate change and works on ecometabolomics.
- [00:01:18.840]Did I say that right?
- [00:01:20.020]Yeah.
- [00:01:20.540]More or less?
- [00:01:21.120]Okay.
- [00:01:22.140]I asked one of my colleagues to use that word in a sentence and he couldn't do it, so he's going to learn what it is.
- [00:01:29.340]Okay, so today we have a topic on biotech, eco stuff, and I'll leave all the time to Noure, my colleague.
- [00:01:40.320]Oh, Noure, up to you.
- [00:01:41.980]And your microphone will work, you don't need the phone.
- [00:01:45.320]Okay.
- [00:01:45.760]Good morning, everybody.
- [00:01:48.500]I'm very pleased to be here.
- [00:01:51.720]For a long time, I know, you know, my friend Chuck, we collaborated a lot.
- [00:01:57.680]And it was always, you know, when you come, when you come, when you come.
- [00:02:01.840]And finally, I decided to come and meet.
- [00:02:05.460]I will, I was thinking because with Chuck, we have been collaborating.
- [00:02:15.120]I'm not really, I just started working on AECOM.
- [00:02:21.300]Metabolomics just recently.
- [00:02:23.040]I worked in metabolomics from 2003, four, when I was in Japan,
- [00:02:28.520]I was in the first lab that, you know, I've been using metabolomics.
- [00:02:33.800]And recent years, because of my involvement with the IPCC and climate change.
- [00:02:41.220]So I, and also, you know, and you, you know, Chuck from when about 10 years,
- [00:02:48.300]this may be 10 years.
- [00:02:50.880]So, and the IPCC, so I started working, you know, developing that, you know,
- [00:02:54.960]research, you know, area in my lab with collaboration with Chuck,
- [00:02:59.240]and also collaborating with Michigan State University,
- [00:03:03.240]as well as Silvestav in Mexico, and also another lab in Japan.
- [00:03:09.240]All right, so what, before I don't know if, you know, probably, you know,
- [00:03:16.920]many of you, they know the term omics.
- [00:03:20.460]And we start hearing about omics, you know, what is omics?
- [00:03:24.200]And, in fact, the first, I think, you know, the origin is genomics.
- [00:03:29.800]In the 90s, I remember, you know, most of the scientists and graduate students
- [00:03:36.540]were, you know, impressed by molecular biology and omics,
- [00:03:40.640]molecular biology, what do you want, a PhD in molecular biology?
- [00:03:43.380]What do you want, PhD in molecular biology?
- [00:03:45.420]And finally, you know, we developed the omics and genomics.
- [00:03:50.040]And of course, by the end of the 90s and the 20s, we developed, you know, another omics like, you know, proteomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, ionomics, foodomics, lipidomics, and we started, you know.
- [00:04:09.380]So, in fact, if we can just quickly, you know, what is interesting in metabolomics is because, you know, the plant kingdom, the plant species, they contain more than about half a million different metabolites.
- [00:04:27.160]And with that, so we have been, you know, interested by, you know, how this metabolism, you know, changes.
- [00:04:36.840]So, of course, you have here some definition, you know, it's a discipline that, you know, try to understand, you know, the dynamic of the small molecules.
- [00:04:50.080]Because the classic biochemistry, we have been using a method to analyze, you know, the product of, you take and we extract the sample, we analyze the product, the final product.
- [00:05:02.600]And, of course, especially with the development.
- [00:05:06.740]Of the analytical chemistry, like NMR, you know, the UPLC and LC and the GCMS.
- [00:05:13.320]So, in fact, we found that, you know, we are completely outside the school.
- [00:05:18.140]And this discipline, if I can describe it simply, is by going inside the cell and see what is happening.
- [00:05:26.740]Because the classic biochemistry, you know, the classic chemistry was, you know, outside the cell, take a sample, make a reaction.
- [00:05:36.280]Take the product, analyze the product.
- [00:05:38.600]But we, it didn't show the dynamic of the metabolism, how the difference metabolize people.
- [00:05:45.260]And we know that, you know, the metabolism is not static, it's dynamic.
- [00:05:49.540]So, of course, after, you know, so this is, you know, the metabolome, we say with the metabolome.
- [00:05:59.460]Now you might read, you know, metabolomics or metabolomics.
- [00:06:03.280]And we end at the E on metabolome.
- [00:06:06.260]Or the metabolome.
- [00:06:07.940]All end at the same, you know, the metabolomics.
- [00:06:10.640]The metabolome is the total molecule.
- [00:06:12.620]So simply defined.
- [00:06:14.400]And, you know, the metabolomics is, in fact, a comparison of the profile of the different, you know, species.
- [00:06:25.580]And the different, you know, state, if I can say, of the metabolism.
- [00:06:31.080]Because what is exciting is, in general.
- [00:06:36.080]In chemistry, we know that some molecules have very, very short, you know, what we call half chemical life.
- [00:06:42.500]They last for 24 seconds.
- [00:06:44.460]And we used to, sometimes, you know, when using the classic chemistry or biochemistry.
- [00:06:49.740]Sometimes, you know, when you do the analysis, you have, for example, this, you know, result.
- [00:06:54.560]And when you do another, sometimes you have different results.
- [00:06:57.040]Why?
- [00:06:57.500]Because, in fact, this is what happens, you know, in the cell.
- [00:07:02.320]You know, there is a dynamic that modifies, sometimes, the product.
- [00:07:05.840]All right.
- [00:07:09.980]So, this is, you know, this is the classic biology.
- [00:07:12.620]So, you see, it's like, you know, we were looking from outside.
- [00:07:16.140]And we didn't have any clue about what is happening exactly, you know, from inside.
- [00:07:22.120]And the metabolomics, you know, so metabolomics is like, as I said, you are from inside the cell.
- [00:07:29.920]You go inside the cell.
- [00:07:31.160]And you look at what is happening, the different, you know, the metabolism.
- [00:07:35.140]What is, you know, happening inside the cell.
- [00:07:37.280]And, of course, we have different technologies now.
- [00:07:40.180]You can even, you know, separate the different organelles or the different compartment of the cell.
- [00:07:46.660]The chloroplast, cytosol, and, for example, the mitochondria.
- [00:07:52.400]You can separate them.
- [00:07:53.540]There is a technique to separate the different organelles by using a solvent gradient.
- [00:07:58.160]And then, you know, you can analyze each portion of the cell.
- [00:08:04.860]So, this is just, you know, the root of, you know, as I said, from the DNA.
- [00:08:11.920]In fact, you know, when we did, you know, a lot of work on genomics, we found that genomics showed its limit.
- [00:08:19.580]It cannot explain, you know, what is that.
- [00:08:22.940]So, we developed another homics technology called transcriptomics.
- [00:08:27.920]But also, we found that the transcriptome cannot describe exactly what is happening.
- [00:08:34.580]We developed, you know, proteomics.
- [00:08:35.900]And we know that the proteomics, especially the enzymes, some enzymes, they can, you know, catalyze two or three different reactions.
- [00:08:45.720]We know that.
- [00:08:46.440]We found, we have been in Japan with a Japanese team.
- [00:08:50.040]We found that, you know, one enzyme can catalyze two different reactions.
- [00:08:54.640]It was surprising at that time.
- [00:08:56.500]But when we did, you know, molecular, you know, studies and that we found that this specific enzyme can catalyze two different reactions.
- [00:09:04.300]And therefore, say, you know, why do not study the metabolism or the metabolome or the metabolite, the product of all the genes, the transcript, the proteins, to study the product of that.
- [00:09:18.300]And the product is the metabolite.
- [00:09:20.760]So if you can see here, so this is, you know, you see the plants, you know, they contain, you know, more than, of course, when we say 2,000, 200,000 different chemicals.
- [00:09:33.800]This is something we exclude some secondary metabolites.
- [00:09:36.800]But if we include them, that means the phenolics, the alkylates, and the terpenes, it creates about, you know, 400,000 different metabolites.
- [00:09:48.820]And this is, of course, what also, you know, developed the omics technology is what we call the bioinformatics.
- [00:09:57.140]In fact, the bioinformatics is the step in, you know, studying, you know, the omics technology.
- [00:10:04.140]Instead of spending a lot of time, you know, for example, trying to elucidate all that, you know, metabolism,
- [00:10:09.840]we just, you know, study a portion of the metabolism and we use specific softwares that we can, you know,
- [00:10:16.460]for example, design the entire, you know, pathway of, you know, the molecule.
- [00:10:20.560]What helps a lot?
- [00:10:21.940]Of course, you know, that, you know, nowadays, like 15, 20 years ago, most of that softwares, you know,
- [00:10:29.080]were, you know, they had to buy that softwares.
- [00:10:31.320]But nowadays, most of them are freely.
- [00:10:33.920]But so you can just download and, you know, use them.
- [00:10:36.400]All right.
- [00:10:40.100]So what we use, of course, you have, you know, the most, you know, recent technology that is used.
- [00:10:46.340]It is what we call the UPLCMS.
- [00:10:48.720]The UPLCMS.
- [00:10:50.200]Where is, you know, okay.
- [00:10:52.100]The UPLCMS.
- [00:10:53.420]Or we use the LCMS, the liquid chromatography.
- [00:10:57.060]UPLCMS is the high generation of, you know, liquid chromatography.
- [00:11:01.300]We use the NMR.
- [00:11:03.240]And, you know, we use also the GCMS.
- [00:11:05.640]Okay.
- [00:11:06.180]Why, you know, that different technologies.
- [00:11:09.880]And often if you go through the different, you know, literature, what you see, you see that the GCMS is used.
- [00:11:16.320]Why the GCMS is used?
- [00:11:19.500]Simply because, you know, there is a commercial library that, you know, is, you know, supplied by the suppliers.
- [00:11:27.760]And it is Wiley.
- [00:11:30.160]It's developed by Wiley, the publisher of Wiley.
- [00:11:33.220]And this commercial library, now it's the update, you know, the updated one contains about 350,000 different metabolites.
- [00:11:42.160]So you can easily compare, you know, your, for example, your chromatogram with the commercial library.
- [00:11:48.380]And you can, you know, identify the metabolites.
- [00:11:51.180]Fortunately for the liquid chromatography, UPLC or the LC or the NMR, there is no commercial library.
- [00:11:59.500]There is some private libraries, you know, that, you know.
- [00:12:03.200]Provided by some specialized labs that you can compare, you know, your chromatogram with that library.
- [00:12:10.260]But unfortunately, there are limited and a limited number of, you know, of metabolites in that library.
- [00:12:18.000]You might have 20, maybe 100, not more than 100.
- [00:12:22.460]And the benefit of using the GC-MS is you can do also what we call untargeted metabolomics.
- [00:12:29.260]That means you just go in, you know, like, you know, going fishing.
- [00:12:33.180]You don't know what you are going to catch.
- [00:12:34.800]But the UPLC-MS, or usually we do targeted metabolomics.
- [00:12:40.380]That means we target a specific class of metabolites.
- [00:12:43.420]We use the standard, and we analyze that, you know, and targeting specific metabolites.
- [00:12:49.240]But in this case, that means you know what you are looking for.
- [00:12:53.140]At least you know the class of the metabolite you are looking for.
- [00:12:56.440]But you can miss a lot.
- [00:12:58.640]While with untargeted metabolomics, you know what, you just go, like, and say,
- [00:13:03.160]you know, your profile, and you would never know what this is.
- [00:13:06.060]For example, we determined it in some cereals, especially in soybean in Japan,
- [00:13:11.340]that we determined how the response of some seeds, like soybean,
- [00:13:17.480]and the response to drought, okay, they produce, you know, the inositol,
- [00:13:24.140]which is the sugar, alcohol, in response to drought.
- [00:13:26.820]And this is how they develop their maturity.
- [00:13:30.460]So this is...
- [00:13:33.140]The different technology.
- [00:13:34.520]You can use either or, but I personally prefer the GCMS
- [00:13:39.040]and untargeted metabolomics.
- [00:13:40.620]Always use the untargeted metabolomics.
- [00:13:43.160]So this is, you know, the comparison of the different,
- [00:13:49.780]and as I said, the pros and the cons.
- [00:13:51.780]The only probably negative point with the GCMS is you need to,
- [00:13:58.340]because, you know, the chromatography, the high temperature, right,
- [00:14:01.980]about...
- [00:14:03.120]200 degrees C.
- [00:14:04.280]I'm not familiar with the Fahrenheit.
- [00:14:05.900]200 degrees C is about how much?
- [00:14:08.840]400 Fahrenheit?
- [00:14:10.180]300?
- [00:14:11.540]I'm not familiar with.
- [00:14:12.840]Anyway, so what you need, you need to protect, you know,
- [00:14:16.680]there is a chemical reaction, what we call to derivatize the sample
- [00:14:21.980]to protect, you know, the molecules, you know.
- [00:14:24.360]Why?
- [00:14:24.600]Because it runs at very high temperature, above 200 degrees C.
- [00:14:28.460]So these are what we can, the disadvantage we can see of the,
- [00:14:33.100]the GC-MS.
- [00:14:34.720]But, you know, except that it offers a lot of advantages.
- [00:14:38.480]All right.
- [00:14:45.040]So the most important step in metabolomics, it's not analyzing
- [00:14:49.740]the sample, but in the second step, what we call the chemometrics.
- [00:14:53.860]The chemometrics is, you know, the second step where, as I said,
- [00:14:58.060]you need to analyze a small sample and use the softwares and you
- [00:15:03.080]know, that softwares, you know, determine for you, identify the
- [00:15:06.920]metabolites, the concentration, the type
- [00:15:11.080]of metabolite, the isomers, and also their distribution in
- [00:15:15.100]the different compartment of the cell. And
- [00:15:18.360]you have different softwares.
- [00:15:20.960]Most of them now, almost all of them are
- [00:15:27.100]freely available, you know, that you can use them. Of course,
- [00:15:30.920]the GCMS, you know, now it
- [00:15:33.060]comes with the library, as I said, so that's why we prefer to use the GCMS.
- [00:15:36.920]It comes with the commercial library. When
- [00:15:40.680]the company, some companies, especially like, you know, Agilent
- [00:15:45.060]company started, you know, to develop that
- [00:15:49.020]technology, you have to pay, you know, the library. It was not
- [00:15:52.740]included in the device. So, but from about 10 years now,
- [00:15:57.020]it's included in the library, but you have to update it, you know, just
- [00:16:00.880]the update recently, I contacted Wiley
- [00:16:03.040]and they say it is about 10,000 to update your library.
- [00:16:05.960]They can imagine the cost of that.
- [00:16:08.980]What this is, you know, this is the lab,
- [00:16:10.800]and this is the most important step in, you know,
- [00:16:13.520]in metabolomics is, you know, to what we call
- [00:16:16.700]the bioinformatics or the chemometrics,
- [00:16:19.540]where you use that software.
- [00:16:21.140]It's time consuming, it takes about,
- [00:16:24.020]it can take you one day to analyze one sample
- [00:16:26.800]and even half day, but it might take you about two
- [00:16:30.120]or three weeks to analyze by using the chemometrics
- [00:16:34.300]to analyze your sample.
- [00:16:35.760]So it's very time consuming.
- [00:16:37.700]All right, so this is just, it shows you how to,
- [00:16:45.360]this is using the bioinformatics or the different steps
- [00:16:49.140]that are in the bioinformatics or the chemometrics.
- [00:16:54.140]And of course, as I said, you have the pattern recognition,
- [00:16:58.720]you have the simulation modeling,
- [00:17:00.060]and this is what is, is when you do that,
- [00:17:04.000]after the analysis, what you do,
- [00:17:05.680]you go to some softwares or some website.
- [00:17:09.800]They are, for example, all what you do,
- [00:17:11.480]you upload your profile and that website,
- [00:17:16.480]it's a software, it's a website with the software,
- [00:17:22.000]and that software, it gives you all the different pathways
- [00:17:24.740]of all your metabolite.
- [00:17:26.520]And this is what is interesting because when you see,
- [00:17:30.000]for example, one metabolite, it might be produced
- [00:17:33.640]by two or three different pathways or a shift,
- [00:17:37.480]and this is what is interesting.
- [00:17:39.240]So we can understand and find out what is happening
- [00:17:42.000]inside the cell.
- [00:17:42.980]So the goal of that is, because what is your goal
- [00:17:46.100]of doing that is see later, for example, in ecology,
- [00:17:51.100]how the response of the plant to, for example, drought,
- [00:17:56.180]or for example, global warming.
- [00:17:59.940]And therefore by determining that shift in the metabolism,
- [00:18:04.940]we can develop a new cultivars or new varieties
- [00:18:08.180]or more resilient crops in the future.
- [00:18:11.460]So this is the goal of doing that.
- [00:18:13.620]So what is eco-metabolomics?
- [00:18:19.380]In fact, eco-metabolomics is a new concept
- [00:18:22.240]that we heard about it maybe just a few years ago,
- [00:18:25.000]not more than five or six years ago.
- [00:18:29.880]About two years ago, Frontiers, the group Frontiers,
- [00:18:34.520]the journal Frontiers in Plant Science,
- [00:18:37.680]so with the collaboration with them,
- [00:18:40.100]so they said, "We want to develop a special review process
- [00:18:45.100]about eco-metabolomics."
- [00:18:50.100]And now a lot of researchers are submitting their papers
- [00:18:53.640]to that section of eco-metabolomics.
- [00:18:56.820]If some researcher are worried
- [00:18:59.820]about working on that, so they can submit their papers
- [00:19:03.280]to that section.
- [00:19:04.760]All right, so the eco-metabolomics is, as I said,
- [00:19:12.300]is a new discipline that studies the use of metabolomics
- [00:19:17.300]profiling or the profile to study the ecological variation
- [00:19:24.320]or the ecological behavior of plants.
- [00:19:27.000]What is the response of plant because plant
- [00:19:29.760]respond to the environment,
- [00:19:32.040]especially with the global warming,
- [00:19:34.120]what is happening in the climate change,
- [00:19:35.980]it is happening with climate change, global warming,
- [00:19:38.780]and also carbon dioxide increase,
- [00:19:41.720]and all that is affecting our crops.
- [00:19:46.720]'Cause the IPCC and the ecologists,
- [00:19:52.080]they classified all the crops
- [00:19:56.040]in two different categories.
- [00:19:58.880]They call it,
- [00:19:59.700]some plants are winners and some other are losers.
- [00:20:04.240]The winners are usually the C4 plants,
- [00:20:08.460]'cause the C4 plants,
- [00:20:09.940]they have the capacity to have high photosynthetic rate.
- [00:20:13.520]They can sustain high photosynthesis
- [00:20:15.500]under high carbon dioxide.
- [00:20:18.780]And the losers are the C3 plants,
- [00:20:22.620]which they cannot sustain high photosynthetic rate
- [00:20:25.440]under high carbon dioxide environment.
- [00:20:28.120]But unfortunately,
- [00:20:29.640]most of our crops and our food are C3 plants.
- [00:20:33.160]So that means in the future,
- [00:20:34.540]we will see a significant decline
- [00:20:37.480]in the yield of food production.
- [00:20:40.100]So therefore, we are thinking how to,
- [00:20:42.320]of course, we have different suggestions.
- [00:20:44.460]Some, they say, can we, I was asking,
- [00:20:47.380]can we make, for example, a plant, a C3 plant?
- [00:20:50.960]Since we have the C3, they have the C3 and the C2 system.
- [00:20:55.240]They can, for example, switch to a fixation of oxygen.
- [00:20:59.580]Photorespiration.
- [00:21:01.380]Can we have a C3 plant and then switch to a C4?
- [00:21:05.740]I said, I don't know.
- [00:21:06.620]Maybe in the future, you might have that kind of plant.
- [00:21:11.060]I don't think so.
- [00:21:11.900]I'm not optimistic, but maybe, why not?
- [00:21:14.420]Because you can expect in the future, maybe we can.
- [00:21:17.960]So the issue is, I think the issue is not to have a plant
- [00:21:22.960]that have the C3 and the C4 photosynthetic pathway,
- [00:21:27.040]but just how to make plants.
- [00:21:29.020]The C3 plant sustaining high photosynthetic rate
- [00:21:32.700]under high carbon dioxide concentration.
- [00:21:35.040]This is by understanding the metabolism
- [00:21:38.020]and we will see that using eco-metabolomics, metabolomics,
- [00:21:43.020]we observe that there is a lot of shift
- [00:21:45.720]in the metabolism of the C3 plants.
- [00:21:48.240]So of course, should not be compared to chemical ecology.
- [00:21:58.460]It's not chemical ecology.
- [00:21:59.720]Chemical ecology, we can say it's the classic biochemistry
- [00:22:03.740]of plants, so it's different from that.
- [00:22:06.480]What we can, the difference between the eco-metabolomics
- [00:22:12.060]and chemical ecology are the complex experiment designed,
- [00:22:16.240]of course, when we do eco-meta.
- [00:22:19.020]And the issue that, the major issue that we do have
- [00:22:24.020]in eco-metabolomics is sampling, because the problem
- [00:22:28.400]is how to sample since the metabolism is very dynamic.
- [00:22:35.560]And we do have that in a constraint is how to sample
- [00:22:40.040]and sample at appropriate time and the appropriate sample.
- [00:22:44.820]Because sometimes you just in 10 seconds,
- [00:22:48.340]you might miss a metabolite.
- [00:22:50.420]And this is what, so what we do, usually what we do
- [00:22:54.600]is we sample a series of sometimes 10
- [00:22:58.340]and 15, 20 samples for the same,
- [00:23:01.000]under the same condition, to being sure that,
- [00:23:03.640]you know, we are not missing a metabolite.
- [00:23:05.760]This is what makes, you know, the study complex and hard.
- [00:23:08.760]When you, as long as you harvest
- [00:23:10.780]and you prepare your sample, then after, you know,
- [00:23:13.060]it comes, you know, it's easier, you know,
- [00:23:15.100]to study your samples.
- [00:23:16.900]All right, so this is just, you know, an example,
- [00:23:24.080]you know, the number, sorry.
- [00:23:28.280]So you see, you know, the number of studies, you know,
- [00:23:32.920]that, you know, on ecometabolomics, you know,
- [00:23:35.580]in the last, you know, decade.
- [00:23:37.000]So you see the number, how the number of, you know,
- [00:23:39.680]research on ecometabolomics is, you know,
- [00:23:42.220]is getting, you know, more and more getting up.
- [00:23:44.680]Why? Because as I said, you know, one of the,
- [00:23:47.700]from the last, you know, IPCC meeting in 2000,
- [00:23:52.320]I think it was in 2000, I don't recall very well.
- [00:23:56.720]We had our last meeting in,
- [00:23:58.220]in Colombia and after that, you know,
- [00:24:00.400]the report was released, I think it was in 2000,
- [00:24:04.940]maybe 20, 21 from that, you know, and if you,
- [00:24:09.940]you can, you know, that report, you know,
- [00:24:11.600]the fifth report and the IPCC can be downloaded, you know,
- [00:24:14.940]from the IPCC website.
- [00:24:18.400]And honestly, you know, we have been very scared.
- [00:24:20.860]I've been working on that report for about four or five
- [00:24:23.400]years and, you know, it's really very scary what, you know,
- [00:24:28.160]But the different models, the climate change model, are really scaring.
- [00:24:35.020]We estimate that, for example, like United States, that corridor will be affected much more than other corridors.
- [00:24:45.280]While the Caribbean corridor will be less affected by, for example, drought and warming.
- [00:24:52.680]Even the rainfall, the corridor, the north corridor, like, you know, going from U.S. and north of Europe until the north of China,
- [00:25:02.140]will be extremely affected by drought, will have less rains, a longer drought period, and also, you know, a significant increase in warming.
- [00:25:15.360]And we visited, for example, you might notice now that blooming is very early of the trees.
- [00:25:22.160]Why?
- [00:25:22.640]Because now in Belgium, they are growing grapes for wine, wine grapes, you know.
- [00:25:26.840]Why they didn't grow grapes, you know, they started growing, why?
- [00:25:31.080]Because, you know, the climate is warmer in Belgium.
- [00:25:34.400]And even the farmers are, you know, of course, the farmers are happy to grow grapes, you know, there's more income.
- [00:25:39.800]But, you know, they say, you know, it's something that is not good because in the future, you know, we'll have like a Mediterranean climate in the north of Belgium.
- [00:25:49.100]So, which is, so this is, you know,
- [00:25:52.620]the number of, you know, research are increasing, of course, most of the research are done in U.S. and a little in Canada and also in Europe, especially in the U.K., a little in France and also Japan.
- [00:26:05.260]Japan are doing a lot of research on eco-metabolomics, also Germany.
- [00:26:10.360]Germany in metabolomics or omics technology, I think Germany is leader.
- [00:26:15.200]You know, they started much more a long time before, you know, in U.S. in Max Planck Institute.
- [00:26:22.400]They are famous researcher then and of course after, you know, I have U.S. and of course, you know, in Japan, in RIKEN, I don't know if you can, Tsukuba, where they developed a huge research project on metabolomics and especially on metabolomics.
- [00:26:39.880]They started in 2003, 2004. I was in there working with the first group of, you know, metabolomics.
- [00:26:47.760]So this is, you know, the data.
- [00:26:52.380]This is a list of, you know, the bioinformatics, you know, tools that are applied in omics, including metabolomics or genomics.
- [00:27:00.460]So you see most of them are freely available now.
- [00:27:04.640]So you can just, you know, visit.
- [00:27:06.140]Of course, the lecturer can have it, you know, the PowerPoint file can have it.
- [00:27:14.060]So this is just, you know, the different, sorry, the different, you know, software that are used.
- [00:27:20.160]Most of them are, as I said, are freely available.
- [00:27:22.160]So you can't just, you know, you cannot download them.
- [00:27:26.120]You can use them online.
- [00:27:27.640]They are not, you know, I can't download them.
- [00:27:29.460]Okay.
- [00:27:30.200]You can use them.
- [00:27:31.160]For example, just for the case of MDC, you can download it, you know, MDC can be downloaded.
- [00:27:37.940]The others, most of them, you know, are, you know, available online.
- [00:27:42.420]So you enter, sometimes they request, you know, you create an account and you create an account
- [00:27:47.500]and you can have free access to the software online.
- [00:27:50.340]So this is an example of, you know, the study of, you see, of metabolomics here.
- [00:28:01.280]So you see how we can, you know, determine, you know, the impact of the change of the environment,
- [00:28:08.340]you know, on, you know, the, for example, the leaf here.
- [00:28:11.780]And this is, you know, what is interesting.
- [00:28:14.160]So what is the response, the internal response or the metabolic response
- [00:28:19.880]of the metabolics?
- [00:28:20.320]Of a leaf or plant to the environment.
- [00:28:22.920]When we understand that, you know, when we understand that is, you know,
- [00:28:27.740]this work I think is required and we think that is required and needed by the,
- [00:28:32.780]for example, the plant breeders.
- [00:28:35.260]They can, you know, develop a new breed or new varieties or new cultivars
- [00:28:39.420]that are resistant for, they can, or they can cope with the, for example,
- [00:28:44.460]long drought period.
- [00:28:45.620]And even in the Caribbean, we, we have a longer,
- [00:28:50.120]you know, drought period than we used to have, you know, before.
- [00:28:52.880]Now we have a period of drought that can exceed one month,
- [00:28:56.640]which is very unusual in the Caribbean, in the tropical, you know,
- [00:29:00.880]very unusual.
- [00:29:01.920]But we do have, unfortunately, that.
- [00:29:04.560]And even, you know, the Caribbean, for example,
- [00:29:07.000]all the Caribbean have been divided in three or different zones.
- [00:29:10.400]For example, the North Caribbean, like, you know, Jamaica, Cuba,
- [00:29:14.160]will be less affected, while the South of the Caribbean will be more
- [00:29:18.620]affected by, you know,
- [00:29:19.940]by the global warming.
- [00:29:22.300]The rainfall will be, you know,
- [00:29:24.600]not a significant change in the rainfall, but warming, yes,
- [00:29:29.040]and we know the effect of temperature.
- [00:29:30.780]And this is what is, you know,
- [00:29:32.320]one to figure out how the plant copes with that increase of temperature,
- [00:29:36.320]how we can modify the metabolism and the pathway in order to have a higher
- [00:29:41.660]yield, especially of the C3 plants.
- [00:29:44.340]This is because, as I said, most of our food are C3 plants,
- [00:29:47.620]not C4 plants.
- [00:29:48.680]So this is, you know, what we do, this is, you know,
- [00:29:55.380]the application of, you know, what we call the multivariate, you know,
- [00:30:01.540]statistics. As I said, when we say bioinformatics, in fact,
- [00:30:05.220]bioinformatics is mainly based on statistical analysis. Okay.
- [00:30:10.400]So this is what we, it's not, it's not, of course,
- [00:30:14.220]after we identify the profile and we determine, for example,
- [00:30:17.640]the concentration of C3 plants,
- [00:30:18.660]the different metabolites and we identify them. So what we do,
- [00:30:22.600]we do statistical analysis,
- [00:30:24.100]what we call the bioinformatics is based on statistical analysis.
- [00:30:27.660]Mainly we use, for example, PCA, ACA, or, you know,
- [00:30:32.460]LCPCA or different statistical models in order to have, you know,
- [00:30:37.420]to classify. In fact, the, the, the, the bioinformatics, you know,
- [00:30:42.180]the goal of the statistical and what we call the multivariate analysis is to
- [00:30:47.020]classify the different metabolites.
- [00:30:48.640]Depending on the environmental conditions, for example,
- [00:30:53.060]this category of metabolites are produced under that specific condition,
- [00:30:57.120]environmental condition,
- [00:30:57.640]that specific class of metabolite or that specific metabolite are produced or
- [00:31:03.720]synthesized under that specific ecological conditions. And from there,
- [00:31:09.000]this is, you know, the, from there, you know, the plant breeders,
- [00:31:11.980]they can develop a new breed or new varieties that are more resilient or a
- [00:31:18.620]temperature or the warming or the carbon dioxide. All right, so this is, you can see here, of course,
- [00:31:29.420]you know, probably, but overall, what we can see about, you know, this is the response, so you can
- [00:31:37.000]see that this is a response, you know, to drought, and you have two in red, you have what we call,
- [00:31:42.720]you know, up-regulation, and in black, you know, you have what you call a down-regulation.
- [00:31:49.700]This is only for, you know, the 81, you know, studies, and you see, so what, you know, that
- [00:32:02.360]shifting, so that's mean, you know, by using ecometabolomics, we can determine which metabolite,
- [00:32:10.760]we know the, of course, the primary,
- [00:32:12.700]metabolite, we know that.
- [00:32:14.320]So the secondary metabolite, because we know also the role of the secondary metabolites
- [00:32:19.220]in, for example, in the resistance of plant to drought also.
- [00:32:24.180]But what is interesting is the shift when we, when we have, you know, the upregulation,
- [00:32:32.680]that's mean you have, you know, more metabolite are produced, you know, in the response to
- [00:32:36.760]that environment.
- [00:32:38.760]And downregulation, less metabolites.
- [00:32:42.200]And by analyzing that shift, so we can determine which metabolite, which specific metabolite, you know, is synthesized in the response to drought.
- [00:32:55.980]And therefore, so that's mean, you know, for pan breeders, they can, you know, develop new varieties that produce more metabolite that, you know, to cope to, you know, in a response, you know, to that, you know, to that environmental, you know, constraint of what we call drought.
- [00:33:18.320]So this is in Japan, for example, in Japan, there is a team that works, you know, on rice, you know, because they eat a lot of rice.
- [00:33:25.960]So what they are trying is, you know, how to make, you know, rice, to grow rice with less water.
- [00:33:32.420]So this is a response.
- [00:33:35.160]Of course, I know the person, you know, Professor, you know, Midori, she's working on that for more than 20 years, and she was not successful.
- [00:33:43.960]She keeps trying.
- [00:33:47.180]Why?
- [00:33:48.060]Because, you know, in the future, we know that, you know, we will have less water.
- [00:33:51.480]So one of the strategy of the plant physiologists, by studying,
- [00:33:55.480]by studying, you know, eco-metabolomics is, in fact, you know,
- [00:33:59.500]in the practice, how to improve the water use efficiency of crops.
- [00:34:04.300]How we can produce, you know, high yield with less water.
- [00:34:07.900]We know that, you know, crops, you know, especially some crops,
- [00:34:11.560]they require a lot of waters.
- [00:34:13.340]Sometimes, you know, when I say an example to a student,
- [00:34:16.900]they say, how it can be?
- [00:34:18.360]I don't know.
- [00:34:19.720]In the tropics, if I can give you an example in the tropics,
- [00:34:23.080]one finger of banana.
- [00:34:24.860]One finger of banana that we eat.
- [00:34:27.340]You know how much water we need?
- [00:34:29.220]Do you have an idea?
- [00:34:32.800]10 liters.
- [00:34:34.880]To produce one finger of banana, you need 720 liters of water.
- [00:34:42.580]Can you imagine?
- [00:34:47.040]To produce one potato, one potato, you know, the Irish potato,
- [00:34:51.860]you know how much water you need?
- [00:34:53.880]Just one potato, you know how much water you need?
- [00:34:58.480]80 liters of water.
- [00:35:00.920]To produce one tomato, you need about 120 liters of water.
- [00:35:07.120]So you can imagine if, you know, and the goal of that, you know,
- [00:35:12.560]of ecometabolomics, can we produce the same banana
- [00:35:17.560]with 700 liters of water?
- [00:35:19.420]Or even, let's say, you know, 790 liters.
- [00:35:23.380]Okay?
- [00:35:23.860]You have one liter.
- [00:35:24.880]Okay.
- [00:35:25.340]One liter probably has no meaning.
- [00:35:28.000]But you can imagine the billions of fingers you produce.
- [00:35:31.520]That's making millions and millions of, you know.
- [00:35:34.660]So this is one of the, you know, the goal of, you know,
- [00:35:37.940]studying that chip is how to improve the water use efficiency.
- [00:35:42.360]Okay?
- [00:35:43.800]So this is, you know, one of the.
- [00:35:45.960]The second, if we can go here, so what you see, the heat stress.
- [00:35:49.980]So it's same what you do have.
- [00:35:52.580]You have what we call.
- [00:35:53.840]You know, upregulation and downregulation.
- [00:35:56.840]Why heat stress?
- [00:35:58.460]Because what is, you know, the relationship between the heat and, you know, the food production?
- [00:36:04.560]Because we know that in the photosynthesis, very well known, only 1% of the water is used for the photosynthesis.
- [00:36:13.340]99% of the water is lost by transpiration.
- [00:36:16.660]So the heat, when the plant is exposed to high temperature, what happens?
- [00:36:23.820]If the plant is not close to the stomata, of course, it produces the transpiration.
- [00:36:27.820]That means by reducing the transpiration, you reduce the photosynthesis and therefore the yield or the crop production or the fresh mass production.
- [00:36:39.820]So by studying that, so we want to, even though the plant reduces the transpiration,
- [00:36:45.040]reduce or close the stomata, reduce the transpiration,
- [00:36:50.040]can still sustain high photosynthesis rate.
- [00:36:54.900]And this is what is observed in the C4 plants.
- [00:36:58.220]But the C4 plants, even they close the stomata,
- [00:37:01.220]but they still can sustain high photosynthetic rate.
- [00:37:05.100]So, and we want to have data that,
- [00:37:07.240]by having sustaining high photosynthetic rate,
- [00:37:11.700]even under high temperature.
- [00:37:14.700]So, and that's shifting, you know,
- [00:37:16.340]by then on this study, so you see the different studies.
- [00:37:19.380]So what, you know, how to make, you know,
- [00:37:21.720]for example, to divert the metabolism
- [00:37:24.400]to that specific in a case where the,
- [00:37:27.320]even under heat stress and the closure of the stomata,
- [00:37:31.520]instead of running, you know, the photo respiration,
- [00:37:34.280]the plant can still run,
- [00:37:35.820]the C3 plant can still sustain high photosynthetic rates.
- [00:37:39.560]This is one of the goals by, you know, using, you know,
- [00:37:44.360]ecometabolomics and, you know, for the food production.
- [00:37:48.300]Another is what we call, you know, the carbon dioxide,
- [00:37:54.360]because the carbon dioxide, the same,
- [00:37:56.500]what happens under heat stress or under drought,
- [00:37:59.740]under heat stress, especially under heat stress,
- [00:38:01.720]what happens, the plant, you know, the C3,
- [00:38:04.140]they reduce the photosynthesis.
- [00:38:06.440]So they cannot sustain high photosynthetic rate.
- [00:38:09.860]And, you know, as we, as I said, just a moment ago, you know,
- [00:38:14.020]we classify the C3 plants as losers.
- [00:38:18.160]Why? Because they can't sustain a lot.
- [00:38:20.720]And the goal is how to make, you know,
- [00:38:23.320]you see that, you know, different shifting, you know,
- [00:38:26.040]the up-regulation and the down-regulation.
- [00:38:28.300]So what we are interested is by the up-regulation.
- [00:38:31.440]So the up-regulation, that means, you know,
- [00:38:33.280]that means under heat stress, we still have some, you know,
- [00:38:35.880]increase in some, you know, pathways.
- [00:38:38.380]And by using that, so even under a high carbon dioxide level,
- [00:38:43.680]atmospheric carbon dioxide, the C3 plant can still run,
- [00:38:48.860]you know, high photosynthetic rate.
- [00:38:50.660]Because in the C3 plants, because what we see,
- [00:38:54.420]even, you know, you supply water,
- [00:38:56.200]even the temperature is optimal.
- [00:38:58.260]But under high carbon dioxide, what happens?
- [00:39:00.660]You saturate, you know, you saturate ruby score.
- [00:39:03.940]And therefore, what happens with that plant,
- [00:39:05.800]they cannot sustain, you know, higher photosynthetic rate.
- [00:39:09.100]So now the goal is we can, for example, develop a new,
- [00:39:13.340]varieties of crops that, you know, contains, for example,
- [00:39:17.380]instead of, we know that the ruby score is yields
- [00:39:21.620]approximately 80% of the total proteins of the leaf.
- [00:39:25.860]But what, you know, by producing new breed that, you know,
- [00:39:29.220]produce more ruby score in the leaf 90%.
- [00:39:32.600]So that's mean under higher carbon dioxide, the C3 plant,
- [00:39:36.100]they can sustain higher photosynthetic rates.
- [00:39:39.140]And therefore, you know, we can always have, you know,
- [00:39:41.960]a good food production.
- [00:39:43.000]All right.
- [00:39:47.840]So this is nitrogen, you know, load the same, you know,
- [00:39:52.500]nitrogen is sometimes, you know, is a limiting factor.
- [00:39:56.660]And one of the, as we know the,
- [00:40:00.680]what we call it a water use efficiency,
- [00:40:03.660]we also have the nitrogen use efficiency in physiology.
- [00:40:08.500]And because we know that nitrogen, you know,
- [00:40:10.900]promotes, you know, the production,
- [00:40:12.660]of fresh mass. When you have excess of nitrogen, what happens? The plant, you know, produce more fresh mass,
- [00:40:18.660]but you know, not a lot of fruit or flowers. So what happens is, you know, we want to know what the shift can be, you know,
- [00:40:26.660]the shift in the metabolism that is, you know, induced by what we call the nitrogen.
- [00:40:33.660]And therefore, so you see most of the, you notice that if you compare, you know, with, you know, with the previous,
- [00:40:40.660]you know, you see how many, you know, especially when it comes to the heat stress, the upregulation,
- [00:40:46.660]you know, the upregulated, you know, pathways, the same for, you know, the drought, the upregulated pathways.
- [00:40:52.660]But if you look at, you know, for the nitrogen, you know,
- [00:40:56.660]if you look at the nitrogen, you know, most of the pathways is what we call, you know, downregulated.
- [00:41:02.660]That means nitrogen, you know, I don't want to say that word,
- [00:41:07.660]but you can say it here, you know, don't say that I said it, okay?
- [00:41:11.660]It's like an enemy of, you know, plant growth.
- [00:41:15.660]It just promotes, you know, the production of the fresh mass.
- [00:41:20.660]And what we want is how the plant can use efficiently nitrogen,
- [00:41:26.660]rather than to produce a fresh mass, it produces, you know, for example, fruits or, you know,
- [00:41:31.660]the fruits are there. This is what we know the goal of.
- [00:41:34.660]So that's why, you know, how to make a plant, you know, using efficiently nitrogen.
- [00:41:45.660]All right, so. For example, this is, you know, overall what we can, you know, notice here.
- [00:41:52.660]So what we notice is underdrought, for example,
- [00:41:55.660]you see underdrought dominated by an increase in soluble sugar and derivatives, you know,
- [00:42:00.660]and following this, you know, a rise in total free amino acid concentration.
- [00:42:05.660]So sugars, we know that, you know, as I said, we and.
- [00:42:10.660]We know that, you know, drought, drought increases, you know, the production of sugars.
- [00:42:16.660]The idea came from, you know, we know the idea and we noticed that,
- [00:42:22.660]you know, before using, you know, eco metabolomics or from some species like, you know,
- [00:42:29.660]grass or asparagus or they produce, in fact, you know, they synthesize, you know,
- [00:42:37.660]when they go through a drought, they produce, sometimes you see the grass, you know,
- [00:42:42.660]even for example here, you see the grass, it looks like it's dead,
- [00:42:45.660]but you know, during the spring it grows again.
- [00:42:48.660]In fact, you know, the grass survived because of the shift in its metabolism
- [00:42:54.660]to produce some specific sugars which are called fructans or fructooligosaccharides.
- [00:42:58.660]And the fructooligosaccharides, you know, are osmoregulators.
- [00:43:04.660]They regulate the metabolism in the root of grass or asparagus or onion.
- [00:43:10.660]And you know, this is what helps, you know, the grass surviving to very low temperatures
- [00:43:15.660]or very long period of drought.
- [00:43:18.660]It's not, you know, it's less a carbon reserve or energy reserve,
- [00:43:23.660]but it's osmoregulators.
- [00:43:27.660]So, and this is, you know, what we, you know, we noticed that, you know,
- [00:43:32.660]there is an increase of sugars.
- [00:43:35.660]They play a major role in, you know, in drought.
- [00:43:40.660]And recently, there is a researcher, American, I forgot from which university,
- [00:43:49.660]is, you know, is considering, and we are thinking now,
- [00:43:53.660]even the sucrose, which we know from a long time,
- [00:43:56.660]to be considered as a phytohormone.
- [00:44:02.660]Probably strange, but yes, because we did a lot of work in Japan,
- [00:44:07.660]and there is a lot of work showing the role, the physiological role of sucrose.
- [00:44:15.660]There is a lot of work, you can go through the literature.
- [00:44:18.660]So that's why it's considered as, you know, as they want to now, I mean,
- [00:44:25.660]I think, you know, we heard about here that, you know, she made that, you know,
- [00:44:30.660]suggesting she sent to the International Union of Biochemistry in the UK,
- [00:44:35.660]requesting, you know, to consider can we include sucrose like, you know, like jasmonic acid.
- [00:44:42.660]The GA, the GA was just a metabolite that was discovered many years ago.
- [00:44:47.660]But after that, you know, it's not only a metabolic role, it has a physiological role,
- [00:44:54.660]like the phytohormones. And now it's a phytohormone, you know,
- [00:44:58.660]it's one of the seven or eight, you know, class of phytohormones.
- [00:45:06.660]Also, you know, a similar increase, you know, in, you know, under heat stress or sugars.
- [00:45:11.660]So that's why, you know, we focus a lot on sugars than, you know,
- [00:45:15.660]the others and also the amino acid. Why? Because we know also, you know, that, you know,
- [00:45:21.660]there is
- [00:45:23.660]a link between, you know, the sugar pathways and the amino acid pathways.
- [00:45:29.660]Because we know that in the case of the photorespiration, most of the, for example,
- [00:45:34.660]they have the PGA and that, you know, the C2 is recycled to amino acid.
- [00:45:39.660]And we know there is, you know, a link between the two pathways.
- [00:45:44.660]Also an increase, you know, in, you know, in the flavonoids, you know,
- [00:45:48.660]are seen with most commonly increased under drought. Why?
- [00:45:52.660]Because in fact, you know, what happens is we think that, you know,
- [00:45:56.660]the secondary metabolites, especially the, sorry,
- [00:46:02.660]especially the flavonoids, anthocyanin and terpenes are, you know,
- [00:46:07.660]also in the response to drought. We know that, you know,
- [00:46:11.660]in the response to drought, like, for example, some, some,
- [00:46:16.660]some tubers in response to drought, what they do, they produce phenolic compounds.
- [00:46:21.660]We know that some other plants, as I said, they produce sugars.
- [00:46:26.660]Some they produce, you know, the phenolic compounds.
- [00:46:29.660]Now, what is the role of the phenolic compound is still a mystery.
- [00:46:34.660]But we don't know why the plant, you know, what is the role.
- [00:46:37.660]We understand the role of sugars, the case of the fructooligosaccharide,
- [00:46:41.660]but we don't understand it exactly because for the physiologists,
- [00:46:45.660]a lot of physiologists, they consider, for example, that secondary metabolites are waste of plants.
- [00:46:50.660]But we know that plants do not produce waste.
- [00:46:55.660]It's well-known that plants do not produce waste.
- [00:46:58.660]It's not like animals for the simple reason that they are in autotrophics.
- [00:47:03.660]So there is a role, there is some suggestion,
- [00:47:06.660]they suggested that some phenolics are used like a mobile by the plant
- [00:47:12.660]to communicate between the different parts of the cells.
- [00:47:15.660]That suggestion was made in a conference,
- [00:47:19.660]and there is one or two papers, especially of Professor Scalber from France,
- [00:47:25.660]who did a lot of work on phenolics.
- [00:47:27.660]And one of the suggestions is, you know, plants, they use the phenolics
- [00:47:31.660]to communicate, communication between the flower, the root, or the leaf,
- [00:47:36.660]or they use some phenolics.
- [00:47:38.660]Now, the process, how the process is, honestly, is still a mystery.
- [00:47:44.660]The same, for example, in a response to a drought,
- [00:47:48.660]because we know that there is a relationship, a link between drought
- [00:47:54.660]and the maturation and ripening of some, you know, of some crops.
- [00:47:58.660]So, and they say because in the response to a drought,
- [00:48:02.660]so some plants, you know, they produce, you know,
- [00:48:05.660]they produce some phenolics compound.
- [00:48:09.660]Now, but what is the process?
- [00:48:12.660]The issue is that we do have, we did some work in France with a French team,
- [00:48:17.660]with a famous physiologist, but honestly, we never found, you know,
- [00:48:22.660]how this physical signal is translated to a chemical signal.
- [00:48:28.660]We never found something.
- [00:48:30.660]We tried to do molecular biology.
- [00:48:32.660]We extracted.
- [00:48:33.660]We did protein analysis, and we never found any something.
- [00:48:37.660]And honestly, I was, I gave up.
- [00:48:41.660]Because we never found something, you know, tangible, how this physical,
- [00:48:46.660]how this physical signal is translated to a chemical.
- [00:48:52.660]How heat can, you know, produce, we know that.
- [00:48:55.660]Of course, we know that what we call the heat shock proteins.
- [00:48:59.660]But in fact, you know, the model that we used,
- [00:49:03.660]we didn't find any heat shock proteins.
- [00:49:07.660]So what is the signal?
- [00:49:09.660]How the signal is translated from a physical from heat is,
- [00:49:13.660]you know, translated to.
- [00:49:15.660]So, for example, for some climacteric fruit in physiology,
- [00:49:19.660]we know that, you know, heat is translated, you know,
- [00:49:22.660]there is what we call a gene expression,
- [00:49:26.660]and then you have ethylene production that, you know,
- [00:49:29.660]triggers, you know, the process of ripening.
- [00:49:31.660]We have some studies like that and well known.
- [00:49:34.660]But how in some plants, you know,
- [00:49:36.660]how this signal is translated, we don't know.
- [00:49:39.660]There is no, it's still a mystery.
- [00:49:44.660]All right, so, and this is, so we can say the change
- [00:49:49.660]in the sugar concentration across the species
- [00:49:52.660]is probably a good roadmap for selection
- [00:49:55.660]of potential drought and heat tolerant crop genotypes.
- [00:49:59.660]And this is the goal because as I said,
- [00:50:02.660]we know that, you know, by probably by,
- [00:50:05.660]we are already at 9 billion.
- [00:50:07.660]Why the models, you know, they, you know,
- [00:50:09.660]predicted 9 billion by 2030.
- [00:50:13.660]By 2030, you know, the AFL predicted the world population
- [00:50:16.660]would be by 9 billion.
- [00:50:18.660]Already, you know, 9 billion by, you know,
- [00:50:20.660]from more than two or three years.
- [00:50:22.660]So that's mean by 2030 or 50, we will be, you know,
- [00:50:25.660]even though there is some research Canadian,
- [00:50:27.660]they published recently a paper saying, you know,
- [00:50:30.660]by 2050, the population will decline to 6 billion.
- [00:50:34.660]I don't know the argument.
- [00:50:36.660]I had been through the paper.
- [00:50:38.660]I was not really convinced.
- [00:50:40.660]But, you know, they published it.
- [00:50:42.660]They said it will decline to 6 billion by the end of this century. So 3 billion, that's been 50% of the population. And the one who asked me, you know, I was asking the question, I said, maybe, probably, you know, the 3 billion will die from hunger.
- [00:51:00.840]I don't know. I don't know, honestly. But they published that paper. So you see, you know, by the end of this century, what we, if we estimate, we estimate that, you know, for example, the yield, because of global warming, and will decline by, you know, depending on the region, but some region, for example, like in the U.S., the models, you know, are predicting that the yield will decline by about 20% to 30%.
- [00:51:28.340]Okay.
- [00:51:30.560]If we,
- [00:51:30.720]if we consider for some other region of the world, like, for example, the Caribbean, the sea level rising, most of the island, they will lose about 10% of the coastal land.
- [00:51:41.980]So you can imagine the consequences of that, you know.
- [00:51:48.060]So how to feed that population, because this is the main concern, you know.
- [00:51:52.100]I'm not talking about U.S., because sometimes U.S., they have a lot of food, okay, but overall, we are thinking about, even in U.S.,
- [00:52:00.440]I mean, they might be, you know, impacted, you know, the food production might be, you know, impacted.
- [00:52:06.560]So to select, as I said, to select, you know, the potential drought and heat-tolerant crops, you know, in which, you know,
- [00:52:15.260]C-rich compounds respond more efficiently than N-rich molecules, because as I said, you know,
- [00:52:21.380]we are now focusing on the C-rich compounds, especially sugars or carbohydrates, you know, because sometimes we say sugars,
- [00:52:30.160]also sugar alcohol, because sugar alcohol sometimes, you know, are also linked to, we found that a lot, especially in seeds,
- [00:52:37.840]the seeds, you know, are in response to, you know, to a drought, and, you know, for the maturation, to trigger the maturation process,
- [00:52:46.980]they start, you know, producing, you know, what we call some sugar alcohol, and this is how they can, you know, maintain, you know,
- [00:52:54.100]that, you know, maintain their low metabolism by accumulating sugar alcohols.
- [00:52:59.880]So, especially the inositol, which was found in most of the seeds, we use it, you know, soybean,
- [00:53:06.480]and, you know, we found that, you know, soybean and many seeds, you know, they produce, you know,
- [00:53:11.820]they synthesize just, you know, before, you know, prior to the dormancy, during the desiccation, maturation, desiccation,
- [00:53:18.620]they accumulate a lot of sugar alcohol, and this is how, you know, that help maintain, you know,
- [00:53:23.900]that, you know, that the dormancy for, you know, for unguided period. Of course, the sugar alcohol
- [00:53:29.600]are also, because they say, what, you know, is the phytohormones? Yes, but we found that the sugar
- [00:53:34.740]alcohol, that's what did trigger the bisynthesis and the massive export of, you know, the phytohormones
- [00:53:41.120]of the ABA. It's the link between, you know, inositol, that sugar alcohol, and accumulation
- [00:53:47.280]of ABA. We found that, for example, in onion, we did some work on onion, and we found, you know,
- [00:53:53.700]prior to a massive export of ABA for the dormancy, there is a
- [00:53:59.320]massive export of sugars first, of fructooligosaccharide, you know, shorter, you know, very short, you know,
- [00:54:05.680]polymers of fructans, and, you know, there is a massive export, and then after that,
- [00:54:11.860]you know, there is a drought, and then there is a massive export of ABA. So that means
- [00:54:17.660]the sugar are more important than the ABA for the dormancy of some bulbs.
- [00:54:22.840]Okay, so this says, you know, and in fact, you know, the drought
- [00:54:29.040]without reducing, you know, the enzymatic capacity and the subsequent, you know, need for
- [00:54:34.480]retranscription and de novo biosynthesis of proteins. So this is, you know, instead of,
- [00:54:40.740]you know, for example, you know, what we call, you know, have what we call de novo or transcription,
- [00:54:45.600]you know, or modify. So what we do just, you know, to how we can, you know, trigger a specific,
- [00:54:52.340]sometimes we don't need, you know, what we call de novo or we don't need to modify the genome
- [00:54:59.700]because we have that, you know, now what we call the epigenetics. What is interesting in epigenetics
- [00:55:06.880]is that some plants or plants, they have that capacity to modify the response, to modify the
- [00:55:14.700]phenotype or to modify the response without modifying the genome. They have that capacity
- [00:55:21.120]because they are,
- [00:55:22.320]they are a plant and this is one of the reasons that we think now the secondary metabolites,
- [00:55:27.200]even though still some physiologists consider as a waste of what plant, they do not produce
- [00:55:32.400]waste, they have a role, still we have a lot to discover about, you know, the secondary
- [00:55:38.160]metabolites and their role in plants. So this is, you know, now, so the goal is, you know,
- [00:55:43.080]why is, you know, what we can say. So what we can say is, you know, why we do ecometabolomics
- [00:55:50.820]because for
- [00:55:51.820]simply if we can have a summary of this talk. So we are facing a climate change. Climate change,
- [00:55:59.340]and we know plants, they grow in an optimal environment. They need adequate temperature,
- [00:56:04.620]carbon dioxide environment, water, and of course nutrients, especially nitrogen.
- [00:56:13.100]And we know that the climate is negatively impacting the growth of plants.
- [00:56:21.340]And we know that, as I said, most of our plants, they will not survive to that change of the
- [00:56:28.540]climate. So by understanding the metabolism, by understanding the modification of the response
- [00:56:39.420]of the plant using the profile of the different metabolites, we can develop new varieties by, for
- [00:56:50.860]example, developing or creating the optimal environment, or inducing a shift in the
- [00:56:56.780]metabolism, just for example, by modifying the environment or growing under a specific
- [00:57:05.020]environment, or developing new varieties by using molecular engineering
- [00:57:12.620]and developing new hybrids or new varieties of crops that respond positively
- [00:57:20.380]to the increase of temperature and sustaining a high photosynthetic rate and
- [00:57:27.180]producing high yield without being impacted by that negative environment.
- [00:57:32.700]So the ecologists, of course, and in our metabolomic research must now
- [00:57:39.660]work together, of course, we are working together, there is no doubt about that,
- [00:57:44.220]and to develop three keys in our framework necessary to integrate the plant metabolomics in
- [00:57:49.900]ecology. And as I said, so from the last, I can't say, from five, six years, of course,
- [00:57:57.660]excluding, you know, my, you know, Chuck, we are, you know, developing like a network
- [00:58:05.740]now with the U.S., of course, and, you know, with France, even though it's more difficult to
- [00:58:13.180]collaborate with the French scientists, okay, so with also Mexican, with the CINVESTA
- [00:58:19.420]in Mexico, they have a good team there, with also the Japanese, because they have a very good team
- [00:58:25.820]here, sophisticated labs in Tsukuba, for those who are familiar with Japan, and also with the
- [00:58:32.780]now British, especially with the University of Edinburgh, and we, from the recent years, there
- [00:58:41.820]is a new journal that was also launched by Plus Climate, which is Plus Climate, so now
- [00:58:48.940]we are welcoming papers on ecometabolomics. Of course, as I say, there is a
- [00:58:55.020]review session, a special section on ecometabolomics that is now developed under,
- [00:59:04.140]is being offered by Frontiers in Plant Science, there is a special section on ecometabolomics,
- [00:59:12.140]and we are welcoming papers, we welcome papers from scientists. We had some
- [00:59:18.460]very interesting papers, and many interesting papers have been published the last few years,
- [00:59:24.540]and of course we are still welcoming papers. One of the goal of coming here is probably to
- [00:59:30.780]invite scientists probably to submit to Frontiers in Plant Science, or plus climate,
- [00:59:36.940]and recently of course, I mean probably by next year, there is another big,
- [00:59:48.060]again, a large meeting of the IPCC and also the IUCN, because unfortunately even the climate
- [00:59:56.780]change is not just impacting food production, but also is impacting what we call the extinction
- [01:00:03.500]of species. We know overall that every 100 years we have about 10 to 12 species that extinct.
- [01:00:14.940]This is a natural process.
- [01:00:17.660]But unfortunately during the 20th century, the IUCN, the International Union on Conservation
- [01:00:25.420]of Nature, we have a list of 112 species that have been extinct during the 20th century.
- [01:00:34.620]So you can imagine the number of species there, and some of them might be crops in the future,
- [01:00:41.980]you know, in France, because, you know, they are, because of serial
- [01:00:47.020]production, because France is a larger producer of cereals, they introduced the wild, you know,
- [01:00:53.260]wheat, what we call the black wheat. Now they started growing the black, and this is one of the
- [01:00:59.340]strategy for the ecologists and the eco-metabolomists, and also the physiologists,
- [01:01:06.540]is to go back to what we call the wild-related species.
- [01:01:12.220]Because in fact, we found that the wild-related species are more
- [01:01:16.540]resistant to drought, to disease. Why? Because simply, if we can see,
- [01:01:23.580]if just for any pain or any infection, we take antibiotics, antibiotics,
- [01:01:29.100]by taking a lot of antibiotics, what happens is you weaken your immune system.
- [01:01:33.340]So we have been growing plants, we domesticated plants, okay, you need water, we supply water.
- [01:01:39.260]You need nutrients, we supply nutrients. So the plants, they lost their capacity to cope with
- [01:01:46.060]that drought or heat stress. And we found that the white relative species, they still have that
- [01:01:53.740]trait, that characteristic. So that's why now developing a new breed, we use the white relative
- [01:01:59.660]species. The good example is recently in US, in Idaho, they developed a new variety of Irish
- [01:02:07.340]potato, which is resistant to that disease that affects, which is the fire blight. So
- [01:02:15.580]that what they did, they just went to the ICP in Peru, and they obtained a wild potato,
- [01:02:24.700]general plasma, wild one, and they developed a new variety of Irish potato, which is resistant,
- [01:02:31.340]because we found that the wild species is resistant to that disease. So this is by
- [01:02:39.340]understanding, as I said, by understanding, so we can develop new varieties and of course produce
- [01:02:45.100]the food that we need in the future.
- [01:02:47.420]All right, so this is just some, as I said, some key questions,
- [01:02:56.780]of course, and technical framework. So this is some question that we need to answer, because we need
- [01:03:06.860]to answer that, as I said, because we have the responsibility as a scientist to make sure that our
- [01:03:14.620]children will have enough food to eat, otherwise I don't think they will bless us.
- [01:03:19.260]All right, so this is all the questions that we need to answer to.
- [01:03:29.980]This is some terminologies, of course, for if you are not familiar with some terms, some they are,
- [01:03:44.140]this is some statistical analysis that we use in chemometrics, the most used,
- [01:03:49.500]the PCA, the ICA, which is also the ACA, but this is the most used.
- [01:03:55.020]All right, thank you for listening, and I don't know if you have any questions or you know.
- [01:04:05.980]Thank you very much.
- [01:04:07.020]That's about it, but I think we take one more question.
- [01:04:13.660]I think we take one or two questions real quick.
- [01:04:15.500]Well, you can take more you know.
- [01:04:19.260]Thanks for your presentation. So we think about adapting ecology,
- [01:04:34.060]I mean taking care of our environment and looking for natural variation in species.
- [01:04:43.180]Or indeed artificial variation that you alluded to by transgenics, etc.
- [01:04:49.020]You know this is a multi-pronged, it's going to need a multi-pronged approach, right.
- [01:04:58.780]So you could almost say invent a new whole field which is just eco-mix. Get rid of all of the,
- [01:05:06.780]because metabolomics what you described is just one tool that's going to be needed
- [01:05:12.700]in this process, right. And you alluded to the fact that you know transcriptomics alone
- [01:05:18.380]doesn't get you there, genomics alone doesn't get you there. So really you need to the way to
- [01:05:24.780]to actually find this variation that is going to make more resilient plants
- [01:05:30.060]in the environment or in agriculture is going to need a multi-pronged approach
- [01:05:35.020]of which metabolomics is just one, right. So my question is of the studies
- [01:05:42.220]you alluded to in all of the different you know be it carbon dioxide or nitrogen or heat stress
- [01:05:47.180]presumably most I would hope that some if not most of those would be tying metabolomics back to
- [01:05:57.020]you know genome-wide association studies or conventional QTL mapping that kind of thing.
- [01:06:03.980]So you can relate the genetics of what's going on to the metabolites that you're identifying.
- [01:06:11.740]Do you see what I mean? So how does actually if you identify a different
- [01:06:17.340]metabolic fingerprint between two different varieties of whatever plant
- [01:06:22.220]how does that get you towards improvement? So that's what's interesting in fact so that's why
- [01:06:29.340]as I said when we started about you know genomics we have been identifying the genes and you know
- [01:06:35.740]expression and so on and then it was like and it was you know from what we call upstream
- [01:06:41.260]to downstream but by understanding the basic metabolism okay we can go upstream and go to the
- [01:06:50.460]use the genomics by understanding the for example you grow a plant under normal condition okay
- [01:06:58.060]then you know you you expose plant to drought you see how the plant responds to which metabolites
- [01:07:04.940]have been for example up regulated and which metabolites have been down regulated
- [01:07:10.780]right so you you notice that with us for example the plant produces more inositol more sucrose
- [01:07:17.900]but less for example some amino acids so then when you do you do the same but you know you
- [01:07:24.620]develop a plant that you know produce more inositol more sugar and less for example
- [01:07:30.300]amino acid and you grow it and you expose it to drought and then you see that plant
- [01:07:34.860]copes well with the drought so you see you see the benefit now by using metabolomics in fact
- [01:07:40.300]it's like you know to me probably it's a little bit you know rough but it's like you know by
- [01:07:49.100]when we started by genomics i mean it was not a choice because in the 90s you know i remember you
- [01:07:56.380]know just you know finishing my graduate studies and all the students you know oh do molecular
- [01:08:02.600]biology oh molecular biology it was at that time you know sunday i don't know probably many of you
- [01:08:07.720]remember that time everyone was you know
- [01:08:09.820]excited by molecular biology i personally was you know i don't want i said no i'm not interested in
- [01:08:16.140]molecular biology i have been offered the position the condition you work on you know molecular
- [01:08:20.840]biology of tomato in france i say no i don't want to do that i studied physiology for long years
- [01:08:26.360]and i invented to shift no i'm not interested but finally i said molecular biology is just a
- [01:08:31.540]technique it's not a discipline i'm sorry it's a technique it's not a discipline so finally we
- [01:08:37.260]found that you know we did a lot of
- [01:08:39.340]a lot of genomics but it doesn't explain so by understanding the ion and the metabolism
- [01:08:45.580]we can develop a new variety that helps much more there for example the plant breeders a specialist
- [01:08:52.140]in plant breeding to develop and of course this is what we are doing okay that helps much more
- [01:08:58.220]than you know doing genetics because when you do genetic you know or which character you say which
- [01:09:03.500]rate you want to develop a new plant of course you want to develop for the color probably you want to
- [01:09:08.860]develop for you know for example a sweet pepper you have a yellow paper of course you want a
- [01:09:14.220]yellow paper but what i'm interested in a plant that you know is resilient that you know can you
- [01:09:20.220]not cope with for example in a warming so which metabolism helps the plant to resist to drought
- [01:09:27.820]i want to figure out that so how to do that can i start with genomics which gene you know to target
- [01:09:33.900]which gene to modify i don't know so i have to understand
- [01:09:38.380]what is happening what happens in the cell when the cell for example the plant is exposed to you
- [01:09:43.820]know water you know deficiency understanding the metabolism and from then i can develop a
- [01:09:50.060]new cultivar that can resist to drop by the same argument too like you can't just do metabolomics
- [01:09:57.660]alone right you can't say i'm a molecular biologist or or i'm a you know protein chemist
- [01:10:04.540]you've got to put all of these together okay yeah yeah all of these are just
- [01:10:07.900]tools yeah you put it together you put it together so these paper all of the studies you
- [01:10:13.580]listed are they are they mostly integrative systems biology type many of them yes many of them many of
- [01:10:21.020]them are doing that and as i said you know there is some interesting papers if you visit you know
- [01:10:26.540]frontiers in plant science you see the section echo metabolomics you will see very interesting
- [01:10:31.420]papers you know that's mean they're always the recommendation is to develop the new varieties of
- [01:10:37.420]plant you know that are for example that are resistant to a high temperature or for example
- [01:10:43.340]to some stress or some even recently i think we had one paper you know that you know uh integrated
- [01:10:49.340]you know fertilization and and you know the the the response of plant to the environment i think
- [01:10:56.780]it was recently i'm not i think recently i just approved it you know being accepted
- [01:11:06.940]complexity or this whole system if you take this to the tropics and put it into a multiple
- [01:11:12.220]crop system you add another huge dimension of complexity which must be very exciting
- [01:11:17.820]in a way but also difficult to understand no it's not difficult to understand i mean
- [01:11:25.180]of course probably i remember you know because sometimes you know i i i i can tell you from
- [01:11:30.860]my experience you know when i started working on on metabolomics you know what the first
- [01:11:36.460]was complex honestly i was in i was scared about you know using bioinformatics because analysis is
- [01:11:42.780]very simple you know just you know you extract you prepare the sample even i have been doing
- [01:11:47.500]we have been doing you know uh compartmentation it was not easy at all i've been working within
- [01:11:54.460]a u.s team japanese team to compare the two separate the different organs of the cell that
- [01:11:59.820]was not easy it's a technique you know but extremely difficult to separate you know the cytosol
- [01:12:05.980]from the the mitochondria from the you know the uh the the and and the chloroplast because the
- [01:12:13.660]chloroplast we know the chloroplast and the vacuoles and are the main you know compartment
- [01:12:18.140]for the most of the metabolism occurs in the chloroplast and the vacuum so we separated that
- [01:12:23.740]and after you know we have been very surprised at what we what we observed so we have the technique
- [01:12:29.740]now the technique you know the technique as i say the software much easier to use i remember
- [01:12:35.500]for example in 2004 5 a software that was developed in the nobel foundation in oklahoma
- [01:12:43.740]so that that software just to convert the the the file generated by the gcms
- [01:12:51.500]to excel we needed about 10 to 12 hours to wait and now you know which is easy the
- [01:13:00.540]the gcms you know the software gcms you know the file are all converted
- [01:13:05.020]to excel so that's me to just you know just you know download them
- [01:13:08.540]so you see the technology you know technology the analytical chemistry you
- [01:13:12.780]know now is very easy and you know that makes you know the study very easy now
- [01:13:17.180]thank you very much for coming
- [01:13:27.660]Thank you.
- [01:13:27.820]Thank you.
- [01:13:27.860]Thank you.
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