Abstract
Turmeric (from Curcuma longa) is a yellow colored spice commonly used in daily diet. It has been extensively used in traditional medicine since ancient times to treat various nervous and disorder disease. A little was known about the biosynthesis curcuminoid in turmeric and identified the enzymes involved in the curcuminoid biosynthetic pathway and confirmed the involvement of the phenylpropanoid pathway in the production of these compounds in plants. Traditionally known curcumin has emerged as a modern biological regulator curcuminoids, agroclimatic and soil environmental variation are also influencing the curcumin synthase gene expression, which is correlated with curcumin yield in turmeric cultivars. Microbial production of curcuminoids is very promising and production yield can be improved by using synthetic biology approaches and metabolic engineering tools, to make heterologous production competitive with the current process of curcuminoid’s extraction from plants. Type III polyketide synthases are responsible for the production of curcuminoids. Among those DCS and CURS enzymes have been used to synthesize curcuminoids. Synthetic biology and metabolite engineering approaches have generated microbial cell factories that can allow the for the mass production of pharmaceutically and nutraceuticals important microbial metabolites in an environmentally friendly and efficient way. Considering a wide pharmaceutical, industrial and health beneficial applications of curcuminoids, this review focused on microbial production of curcuminoids and substrate recognizing and regulatory mechanism of curcuminoid synthase and obtain the mutant enzymes using mutagenesis study and synthetic biology approaches.
Highlights
Turmeric is a yellow coloured spice commonly used in daily food in Asia
In this review focus on the microbial production of curcuminoids
Genomic and data mining-based studies in turmeric have identified major multiple curcumin synthase enzyme genes involved in curcuminoid biosynthesis pathway viz diketide-coenzyme A (CoA) synthase (DCS), curcumin synthase 1 (CURS1), curcumin synthase 2 (CURS2) and curcumin synthase 3 (CURS3) [7]
Summary
Turmeric is a yellow coloured spice commonly used in daily food in Asia. Turmeric has been a subject of extensive research for many years and its therapeutic potential against several diseases including cancer, cardio vascular disease, lung and liver diseases etc. has been studied. Plants accumulate low quantities of curcuminoids over very long growth periods and are difficult and expensive to isolate and hard to synthesize chemically These reasons, in combination with the wide benefits of curcuminoids and their application potential, have led to an increased interest in the last 10years, and attempts to implement the heterologous biosynthesis of curcuminoids have been reported [8]. Its rhizome contains a mixture of curcuminoids, with curcumin, demethoxycurcumin and bisdemethoxycurcumin present in higher amounts These compounds present in turmeric have long been used in traditional food and medicine [12]. Despite their numerous benefits to human health, curcuminoids have poor bioavailability and their natural abundance is low, making their heterologous biosynthetic production very interesting. Recent evidence suggests that many of its beneficial effects are attributed to the presence of compounds such as curcumin, curcuminoid related compounds and various diarylheptanoids [13]
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