Exploring the potential of omics technologies in medicinal plant research: A review in Colombia

Abstract

This review presents advances in the implementation of high-throughput sequencing and its application to the knowledge of medicinal plants. We conducted a bibliographic search of papers published in PubMed, Science Direct, Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science databases and analyzed the obtained data using VOSviewer (version 1.6.19). Given that medicinal plants are a source of specialized metabolites with immense therapeutic values and important pharmacological properties, plant researchers around the world have turned their attention toward them and have begun to examine them widely. Recent advances in sequencing technologies have reduced cost and time demands and accelerated medicinal plant research. Such research leverages full genome sequencing, as well as RNA (ribonucleic acid) sequencing and the analysis of the transcriptome, to identify molecular markers of species and functional genes that control key biological traits, as well as to understand the biosynthetic pathways of bioactive metabolites and regulatory mechanisms of environmental responses. As such, the omics (e.g., transcriptomics, metabolomics, proteomics, and genomics, among others) have been widely applied within the study of medicinal plants, although their usage in Colombia is still few and, in some areas, scarce.