ABSTRACT
Ionomics refers to the understanding of the dynamism of all the elements in an organism. It includes uptake, translocation, accumulation, compartmentalization, regulation, signaling and sensing and integration with other metabolic pathways at macro and micro levels, hence, constitute an important component of system biology. System biology unravels the way a living system functions and is currently a challenging avenue for scientists and more so for plant scientists. Thus, to understand the regulation of elements and related mechanisms, it is necessary to measure as many of the elements contained in a cell, tissue or organism (the ionome) as possible. The elements which share components of their network vary depending on the species and genotype of the plants that are studied and environment they are grown in. The advent of various techniques in ionomics with the availability of robust high-throughput platform and data resources for genotyping and molecular phenotyping has made the job of scientists easier to the point that multiple elements can easily be measured in a high throughput manner. Measuring multiple elements allows researchers to explore the dynamics of the ionome as a whole, not just individual elements in isolation. It also makes gene identification experiments more efficient, which should allow new genetic mapping techniques to identify hundreds of new loci that control this complex system. This chapter describes the understanding of ionome and how this technique can be combined with conventional and emerging genetics techniques to identify genes which control the ionome in organisms.
