Metabolomic study of physical stressors on rice crops

Abstract

Metabolomics is defined as the study of biochemical processes that involve small molecules, namely metabolites. Metabolomics has an important role on studies aimed at the understanding of living organisms at molecular level. Since metabolites are involved in most of biological mechanisms, their quantification and identification serve as an approximation of cellular state. To achieve so, it analyzes the metabolites of organisms submitted to any perturbation and compares the profiles to non-perturbed organisms. Therefore, it can be found how this perturbation affects the organism’s metabolome. In this work a lipidomic study, which only involves the hydrophobic metabolites, will be performed on rice. It aims to evaluate the effect of water scarcity as a physical stressor and influence of the harvesting hour. The study includes lipid extraction, analysis using LC-MS and data processing by chemometric means. Additionally, an optimization of the extracting method is included, studying three different factors.