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The P2M2 Platforrm

The Metabolic Profiling and Metabolomic Platform P2M2, located at Rennes-Le Rheu at the Britany-Normandy INRAE center,is under the administrative and financial supervision of the Institute for Genetics, Environment and Plant Protection (IGEPP). Its activity falls within the framework of an operating agreement established between the different membership institutions INRAE, Institut Agro and University of Rennes 1. Two other units are involved in the organization and the management of P2M2, i.e. BIA-PRP (UR 1268 INRAE Biopolymers Interactions Assemblies) and the IFPC (French Institute for Cider Production, Technical center) organized through a joined UMT. 

Scientific and technological objectives; Research topics and innovations

The Metabolic Profiling and Metabolomic Platform (P2M2) is mainly dedicated to the targeted and untargeted chemical analysis of plant metabolic products addressed to both primary and secondary phytochemicals. Shared and centralized analytical facilities are mainly assigned to internal research programs and external services devoted to metabolic phenotyping for plant resistance to pathogens or tolerance to abiotic stress, to functional genomic approach of plant nutrition, yield production, to assessment of plant defense responses and agroecological interactions or to screening of plant product quality for nutritional, organoleptic uses or industrial valorization. Insofar as the activities are more particularly dedicated to the agronomic or agroecological sectors, the main crops under study are oilseed rape, wheat, potato, pea, apple together with model plants like Arabidopsis and Medicago. Our primary assignments are looking at both technology development as well as analytical applications. The broad field of application of these methodologies has led to a wide range of biological questions being addressed – from large plant chemical biodiversity phenotyping to biochemical marker detection on different topics and more recently to metabolic flux analysis. Metabolic profiling and metabolomics on dedicated matrices since many years (2008) have provided us with a unique insight into plant metabolism dissection and on genetics and environmental perturbation impacts on crop productivity and plant products quality. Some of our recent achievements are concerned with:

• Highlighting of metabolic attributes of nutrient use efficiency
• Description of metabolite determinants of abiotic stress tolerance
• Dissection of constitutive and inducible biochemical traits for crop disease resistance
• Depicting of chemical signaling of plant/insect interactions
• Evaluation of breeding for disease resistance on tuber nutritional quality
• Profiling of root exudates in relation with allelopathy and microbiote diversity in cropping system
• Development of metabolite biomarkers of seed quality, viability, longevity and vigour
• Analysis of phytochemical diversity in large genetic panels for GWAS investigations
• Profiling of polyphenols and their derivatives in fruits and processed products and exploring their properties in fruit-derived products
• Metabolic flux analysis associated to trophic relationships between biochemical pathways and source and sink tissues

The main vision of the P2M2 Platform is not only acting as a technological facility but also offering metabolic consulting expertise for users.