Separating the Inseparable: The Metabolomic Analysis of PlantPathogen Interactions

Plant–microbe interactions—whether pathogenic or symbiotic—exert major influences on plant physiology and productivity. Analysis of such interactions represents a particular challenge to metabolomic approaches due to the intimate association between the interacting partners coupled with a general commonality of metabolites. We here describe an approach based on co-cultivation of Arabidopsis cell cultures and bacterial plant pathogens to assess the metabolomes of both interacting partners, which we refer to as dual metabolomics.