Recent advances in metabolomics for studying heavy metal stress in plants

Heavy metals (HMs) are affected by natural and human activities and contaminate the soil environment, endanger plant growth and pose a serious threat to the ecosystem. HMs interfere with plant metabolism and some protein activities and cause oxygen stress. Plants combat excess HMs in the environment through a complex array of biological activities (such as antioxidant mechanisms, chelation, and regionalization of HM ions). Metabolomics is an emerging technique utilized for the qualitative and quantitative analysis of all low-molecular-weight metabolites that is now widely used in toxicology, disease diagnosis, plant research and other fields and has become an important component of systems biology. This paper reviews the progress and current status of metabolomics research on plants under HM stress and introduces plant detoxification and phytoremediation mechanisms.