XVI International Botanical Congess

Metabolic profiling is a newly emerging discipline with an enormouspotential to shape biology in general and genomics in particular. This presentation will make the case that chemical analytical technologies have advanced to the point where it is feasible to implement strategies that allow the simultaneous measurement of a wide-spectrum of compounds. When coupled to genomics the direct use of metabolic profiling offers a quick way to elucidate the function of novel genes, uncertainties due to regulation at the levels of transcription, translation and protein modification can be circumvented. In agriculture, future generations of products will be directly based upon metabolic engineering and the skillful use of metabolic profiling in genomics programs will minimise product development times.