Plant Single-Cell Metabolomics—Challenges and Perspectives

Omics approaches for investigating biological systems were introduced in the mid-1990s and quickly consolidated to become a fundamental pillar of modern biology. The idea of measuring the whole complement of genes, transcripts, proteins, and metabolites has since become widespread and routinely adopted in the pursuit of an infinity of scientific questions. Incremental improvements over technical aspects such as sampling, sensitivity, cost, and throughput pushed even further the boundaries of what these techniques can achieve. In this context, single-cell genomics and transcriptomics quickly became a well-established tool to answer fundamental questions challenging to assess at a whole tissue level. Following a similar trend as the original development of these techniques, proteomics alternatives for single-cell exploration have become more accessible and reliable, whilst metabolomics lag behind the rest. This review summarizes state-of-the-art technologies for spatially resolved metabolomics analysis, as well as the challenges hindering the achievement of sensu stricto metabolome coverage at the single-cell level. Furthermore, we discuss several essential contributions to understanding plant single-cell metabolism, finishing with our opinion on near-future developments and relevant scientific questions that will hopefully be tackled by incorporating these new exciting technologies.