title: Metabolite Damage and Metabolite Damage Control in Plants.
abstract: It is increasingly clear that (a) many metabolites undergo spontaneous or enzyme-catalyzed side reactions in vivo, (b) the damaged metabolites formed by these reactions can be harmful, and (c) organisms have biochemical systems that limit the buildup of damaged metabolites. These damage-control systems either return a damaged molecule to its pristine state (metabolite repair) or convert harmful molecules to harmless ones (damage preemption). Because all organisms share a core set of metabolites that suffer the same chemical and enzymatic damage reactions, certain damage-control systems are widely conserved across the kingdoms of life. Relatively few damage reactions and damage-control systems are well known. Uncovering new damage reactions and identifying the corresponding damaged metabolites, damage-control genes, and enzymes demands a coordinated mix of chemistry, metabolomics, cheminformatics, biochemistry, and comparative genomics. This review illustrates the above points using examples from plants, which are at least as prone to metabolite damage as other organisms.
authors.affiliation: Horticultural Sciences Department and.
authors.forename: Andrew D
authors.initials: AD
authors.lastname: Hanson
authors.affiliation: Mathematics and Computer Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois 60439; email: chenry@mcs.anl.gov.|Computation Institute, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637.
authors.forename: Christopher S
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Henry
authors.affiliation: Genome Center, University of California, Davis, California 95616; email: ofiehn@ucdavis.edu.
authors.forename: Oliver
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Fiehn
authors.affiliation: Microbiology and Cell Science Department, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 32611; email: adha@ufl.edu , vcrecy@ufl.edu.
authors.forename: Valérie
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: de Crécy-Lagard
mesh_terms: D017343:Genes, Plant; D010935:Plant Diseases; D018521:Plant Physiological Phenomena; D010940:Plant Proteins / Q000378:metabolism; D010944:Plants / Q000201:enzymology / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D010940:Plant Proteins
keywords: cheminformatics; comparative genomics; damage preemption; damage repair; directed overflow; metabolomics