Chapter 6 - Genome editing: applications for medicinal and aromatic plants

Abstract

Medicinal plants have been used for therapeutic purposes and in food and other industries for a long time. The biotechnology based breeding methods (BBBMs) have been applied to these valuable plants. Genetics and biotechnology can help to improve medicinal plants faster through assessment of the genetic diversity, conservation, proliferation, and overproduction. Genetic and metabolic engineering techniques have enabled manipulation by modifying the genes that play a key role in the biosynthetic pathway and production of specific plant secondary metabolites. For functional improvement of crops as well as for studying basic molecular biology in plants, plant genetic transformation has become an essential research tool. In order to increase the efficiency of transformation and to achieve stable expression of transgenes in plants various methodologies of plant transformation have been developed. Various genome-editing methods like sequence-specific nucleases of transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs), zinc-finger nucleases, and clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats-associated (Cas) can produce user-designed medicinal plants. Recently, Agrobacterium rhizogenes mediated transgenic hairy root system provides potential for introducing foreign genes along with the Ri plasmid into plant cells for increased production of secondary metabolites. These current targeted genome editing methods open new gates to medicinal plants to be introduced into appropriate industries.