Metabolic Engineering for High-Value Bioactive Compounds from Medicinal Plants

Abstract

Medicinal plants produce a heterogeneous group of natural metabolic products having distinct compounds conferring adaptive roles like in defense, attract pollinators, act as signaling agents for seed dispersal, produce molecules for abiotic stress resistance, and overall maintain an ecological balance. With the advancement of molecular tools, genetic manipulation of plants has proved to be a revolution for creation of plants with tremendous properties having traits conferring biotic and abiotic stress resistance. Metabolic engineering has made an innovative possibility to enhance the concentration of desired composites and introduction of new biotransformation pathways to a range of species that enhance the nutritive and economical value of crops and horticultural plants. To enhance research avenues in metabolic engineering, new genetic modification strategies have been developed for silencing of genes and enzyme precursors. Genome editing investigates the deep knowledge of biological systems. During the past decade, remarkable genome editing tools have been advanced utilizing nucleases like zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs) and transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs), and most widely clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats/Cas9 (CRISPR/Cas9). This chapter aims to summarize the status of research on metabolic engineering and genome editing tools in major classes of bioactive secondary metabolites with examples which have manifested as very efficacious and excellent tools for the pertinent advancement in agriculture.