Metabolomics Approaches in Microbial Research: Current Knowledge and Perspective Toward the Understanding of Microbe Plasticity

Abstract

Microbes often show remarkable degree of morphological, physiological, biochemical, and molecular plasticity when they encounter stressful or unfavorable environments. This plasticity may involve reversible and nonreversible changes in the morphology of cells, reprograming of metabolic activity and molecular mechanisms. Metabolomics approaches in microbial research have boosted the advance of several protocols to study microbe metabolism and plasticity. In this book chapter, we present a detailed systematic literature review of the current knowledge, main findings, and perspective toward the understanding of microbe plasticity in microbial metabolomics research. Data of metabolomics applied for the characterization of bioactive metabolites, biofilms, and biomarker discovery is presented herein. The systematic literature review covered manuscripts published between January 2014 and August 2018 that were available from scientific databases such as “Google Scholar,” “PubMed,” “ScienceDirect,” “SpringerLink,” and “Web of Science – Clarivate Analytics.” The search through the scientific databases was performed using the keywords “metabolomics” or “metabolite profiling,” along with “microorganism,” “microbe,” “fungi,” “bacteria,” “plasticity,” and “biofilm.”