Metabolite profiling, the simultaneous quantification of multiple metabolites in an experiment, is becoming increasingly popular, particularly with the rise of systems-level biology. The workhorse in this field is gas-chromatography hyphenated with mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The high-throughput of this technology coupled with a demand for large experiments has led to data pre-processing, i.e. the quantification of metabolites across samples, becoming a major bottleneck. Existing software has several limitations, including restricted maximum sample size, systematic errors and low flexibility. However, the biggest limitation is that the resulting data usually require extensive hand-curation, which is subjective and can typically take several days to weeks.

Aqueous and ethanolic extracts obtained from nine Chilean marine macro-algae collected at different seasons were examined in vitro and in vivo for properties that reduce the growth of plant pathogens or decrease the injury severity of plant foliar tissues following pathogen infection. Particular crude aqueous or organic extracts showed effects on the growth of pathogenic bacteria whereas others displayed important effects against pathogenic fungi or viruses, either by inhibiting fungal mycelia growth or by reducing the disease symptoms in leaves caused by pathogen challenge. Organic extracts obtained from the brown-alga Lessonia trabeculata inhibited bacterial growth and reduced both the number and size of the necrotic lesion in tomato leaves following infection with Botrytis cinerea. Aqueous and ethanolic extracts from the red-alga Gracillaria chilensis prevent the growth of Phytophthora cinnamomi, showing a response which depends on doses and collecting-time. Similarly, aqueous and ethanolic extracts from the brown-alga Durvillaea antarctica were able to diminish the damage caused by tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) in tobacco leaves, and the aqueous procedure is, in addition, more effective and seasonally independent. These results suggest that macro-algae contain compounds with different chemical properties which could be considered for controlling specific plant pathogens.

Background: Zinc (Zn) deficiency is one of the most widespread mineral nutritional problems that affect normal development in plants. Because Zn cannot passively diffuse across cell membranes, it must be transported into intracellular compartments for all biological processes where Zn is required. Several members of the Zinc-regulated transporters, Iron-regulated transporter-like Protein (ZIP) gene family have been characterized in plants, and have shown to be involved in metal uptake and transport. This study describes the first putative Zn transporter in grapevine. Unravelling its function may explain an important symptom of Zn deficiency in grapevines, which is the production of clusters with fewer and usually smaller berries than normal.Results: We identified and characterized a putative Zn transporter from berries ofVitis vinifera L., named VvZIP3. Compared to other members of the ZIP family identified in theVitis vinifera L.genome,VvZIP3is mainly expressed in reproductive tissue - specifically in developing flowers - which correlates with the high Zn accumulation in these organs. Contrary to this, the low expression ofVvZIP3in parthenocarpic berries shows a relationship with the lower Zn accumulation in this tissue than in normal seeded berries where its expression is induced by Zn. The predicted protein sequence indicates strong similarity with several members of the ZIP family from Arabidopsis thaliana and other species. Moreover, VvZIP3 complemented the growth defect of a yeast Zn-uptake mutant, ZHY3, and is localized in the plasma membrane of plant cells, suggesting that VvZIP3 has the function of a Zn uptake transporter.Conclusions: Our results suggest that VvZIP3 encodes a putative plasma membrane Zn transporter protein member of the ZIP gene family that might play a role in Zn uptake and distribution during the early reproductive development inVitis vinifera L., indicating that the availability of this micronutrient may be relevant for reproductive development.