Omics Techniques in Crop Research: An Overview

Omics is a collective, broad discipline largely referring to analysis of the interactions of biological information obtained from the profiling of the genome, transcriptome, proteome, metabolome, and several other relevant -omes. While phase one of omics technologies aims at nontargeted identification of transcripts, proteins, and metabolites (essentially gene products) in a given biological sample, phase two deals with a very challenging analysis of data eventually leading to the dissection of the qualitative and quantitative dynamics of biological systems. Essentially, the omics science is enabled by a host of diverse, high-throughput technologies and platforms [1]. The full range of omics technologies can now be applied to understand the same fundamental biological processes [2]. Mapping and defining the relationships among genes, proteins, and metabolites require relative comparison of the networks that eventually help in understanding the regulatory mechanisms. A diverse but converging approaches such as forward and reverse genetics and transgenics (overexpression and knockdowns) can define the function of a gene to the specific phenotype, the omic technologies aim at revealing the function of each and every gene in the genome, which collectively contribute toward elucidating the networks and better understanding the whole plant phenotype [3–5].Access to omics tools at an affordable price is becoming a reality, which together with a large inventory of candidate genes, proteins, and metabolites and their databases deduced from profiling efforts in model systems and crop plants have speeded up the analysis of biological functions operating in various plant stress responses [2, 6]. These new strategies have begun to piece together the physiological and phenotypic observations with information on transcription and transcript regulation, the behavior of proteins, protein complexes and pathways, and the metabolites and metabolite fluxes, finally shedding light on evolutionary adaptive diversifications of organisms