Synthetic Biology Advances for Enrichment of Bioactive Molecules in Plants

Abstract

Plant bioactive molecules are secondary metabolites that have pharmacological effects on human beings. Three types of secondary metabolites are present in plant systems: terpenes, alkaloids, and phenylpropanoids. They may not be very crucial for plant growth and development aspects, but are needful for survivability and fecundity. These pharmaceutical molecules are useful in the development of drug and other herbal preparations of potential health benefits. These phytomedicines are known to exert minimal side effects and enormous positive effectiveness to human health; therefore, their utility is enhancing day by day. Currently, many drug formulations contain plant bioactive molecules as a sole ingredient, covering more than 50% of the medicine-market. Despite the demand of secondary metabolites in the market, their supply is limited from the natural sources; therefore, technologies are required to enhance their production. Although advance breeding and biotechnological tools are being applied to enhance the biosynthetic level of bioactive molecules, synthetic biology offers a promising approach for production of these metabolites at substantial scale. Synthetic biology is a branch of biology and engineering, useful in designing and constructing modulated metabolic pathways and bioengineering of biological systems for the production of bioactive molecules. This chapter discusses about the plant bioactive molecules, their types, biosynthetic pathways, and significance. The molecular biology approaches used for production of the secondary metabolites have been summarized in this chapter. It also covers the systems and tools, which are used in synthetic biology technique for upscaling of the selected metabolites. Further, the case studies of the biosynthetic production of high-value biomolecules and the future perspectives of synthetic biology have been discussed.