Metaomics and Multiomics Approaches to Understand Desiccation and High Temperature Tolerance in Desert Succulents to Identify Relevant Genes and Pathways
摘要
Deserts are among the most inhospitable ecosystems on Earth, characterized by extreme temperatures, intense solar radiation, low water availability, and poor nutrient content. Despite these conditions, desert succulents exhibit remarkable adaptability, largely due to their symbiotic relationships with specialized microbial communities. These microorganisms play a critical role in enhancing plant survival under such stress by contributing to physiological, biochemical, and molecular adaptations. With the advent of high-throughput sequencing and advanced analytical platforms, metaomics—a suite of approaches including metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, metaproteomics, and metabolomics—has emerged as a powerful toolset to dissect these complex interactions at the systems level. This chapter delves into the contributions of microbial consortia to impart climate resilience to desert succulents, with a focus on how metaomic approaches enable the identification of functional genes, regulatory networks, and metabolic pathways involved in stress mitigation. Furthermore, the chapter also discusses integrative multiomics approaches and bioinformatics pipelines that bridge the gap between genotype and phenotype, offering insights into microbial-mediated alleviation of drought, oxidative stress regulation, and nutrient acquisition in host plants. The emerging knowledge holds significant promise for the development of microbe-based bioinoculants and sustainable biotechnological strategies aimed at improving the performance of crops in arid and semi-arid regions. By illuminating the hidden microbial dimension of plant stress adaptation, metaomics is poised to transform both ecological research and agricultural innovation.