Genetic Engineering of Medicinal Plants

Abstract

Despite our efforts in the last two decades to improve yields of useful secondary products in plant cell cultures, the compounds that are now, or about to be, produced commercially are very limited in number. Past experiences have taught us that selection of stable, high-producing cell lines and optimization of culture conditions are both important. We know that elicitation of plant cells can induce or hasten the timing of biosynthesis of some compounds. Organized cultures, especially root cultures, have been found to be useful in some cases when undifferentiated cell cultures fail to synthesize compounds of interest. Most of these approaches, however, are empirical and underlying cellular mechanisms are usually left unexplored.