Abstract
Plants produce a diverse array of natural products, many of which have high pharmaceutical value or therapeutic potential. However, these compounds often occur at low concentrations in uncultivated species. Producing phytochemicals in heterologous systems has the potential to address the bioavailability issues related to obtaining these molecules from their natural source. Plants are suitable heterologous systems for the production of valuable phytochemicals as they are autotrophic, derive energy and carbon from photosynthesis, and have similar cellular context to native producer plants. In this review we highlight the methods that are used to elucidate natural product biosynthetic pathways, including the approaches leading to proposing the sequence of enzymatic steps, selecting enzyme candidates and characterizing gene function. We will also discuss the advantages of using plant chasses as production platforms for high value phytochemicals. In addition, through this report we will assess the emerging metabolic engineering strategies that have been developed to enhance and optimize the production of natural and novel bioactive phytochemicals in heterologous plant systems.
Highlights
Plants have a remarkable capacity to produce a wide array of specialized metabolites ( referred to as secondary metabolites or natural products), to support their defense and ecological adaptation
Plants have a remarkable capacity to produce a wide array of specialized metabolites, to support their defense and ecological adaptation
It has been reported that genes involved in biosynthetic pathways of a number of natural products are organized in functional clusters within plant genomes (Roselli et al, 2017; Lichman et al, 2020; Liu et al, 2020)
Summary
Plants have a remarkable capacity to produce a wide array of specialized metabolites ( referred to as secondary metabolites or natural products), to support their defense and ecological adaptation. In this review we highlight the recent methods that have been used to elucidate natural product biosynthetic pathways, including the approaches leading to proposing the sequence of enzymatic steps, assigning enzyme family, as well as, gene function elucidation. Through this report we will assess the emerging metabolic engineering strategies that have been developed to enhance and optimize the production of natural and novel bioactive phytochemicals in heterologous plant systems.
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