Medicago truncatula - roślina modelowa w badaniach metabolomu roślin bobowatych (Fabaceae)

Over the past few years, Medicago truncatula has emerged as a model legume for the study of plant functional genomics that incorporates profiling of gene expression (transcriptome), protein expression (proteome), and metabolite expression (metabolome) to better understand the biological processes with legumes and their interaction with the environment. It is an excellent species for fundamental studies on the unique secondary metabolism of legumes. Two classes of secondary metabolites are of particular interest: phenylopro- panoids, which have been attributed with health-promoting properties, and another important class of secondary metabolites from M. truncatula are the triterpene saponins, which possess allelopathic, anti-microbial, anti-insect activity, as well as anti-nutritional effects. Profiling and identification of a large variety of natural products from M. truncatula are crucial to metabolomics and functional genomics.