Metabolomics should be deployed in the identification and characterization of gene-edited crops

Methods such as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and gas or liquid mass spectrometry allow the detection of changes in the metabolism (e.g. production of chemical compounds) of plant cells. The collective term of these methods is „metabolomics“. Metabolomics methods can also be grouped together with genomics (analysis methods to examine the entire DNA sequence of an organism), transcriptomics (analysis methods of the entire RNA of a cell) and proteomics (analysis methods of all proteins in a cell) under the term „omics“.
In this review, a further development and improvement of metabolomics methods is recommended for the identfication of genome-edited plants. Genome editing techniques can be used to make changes in the genome of an organism, which can have various effects on the metabolism. Such metabolic changes can, for example, result in a downregulation of the production of a particular metabolite. This condition can be used to differentiate genome-edited plants from the reference plants (i.e. unchanged plants).
Both the metabolomics techniques and the bioinformatic analysis tools need to be further developed to integrate data derived from various omics disciplines (e.g. genomics and metabolomics data sets) and thus be able to make reliable statements for the identification of genome-edited crops.