Gantet Pascal, Memelink Johan
Université de Tours, EA 2106, Biomolécules et Biotechnologies Végétales, UFR des Sciences et Techniques, Laboratoire de Physiologie Végétale, Parc de Grandmont, France.
Trends Pharmacol Sci. 2002 Dec;23(12):563-9. doi: 10.1016/s0165-6147(02)02098-9.
Plants produce a variety of secondary metabolites, some of which are used as pharmaceuticals or are health promoting as food components. Recent genetic studies on the flavonoid biosynthetic pathway show that transcription factors are efficient new molecular tools for plant metabolic engineering to increase the production of valuable compounds. The use of specific transcription factors would avoid the time-consuming step of acquiring knowledge about all enzymatic steps of a poorly characterized biosynthetic pathway. Although genetic approaches are difficult for most plant species, promoter studies of single-pathway genes and T-DNA activation tagging are feasible alternative approaches for isolating transcription factors, as illustrated for terpenoid indole alkaloid biosynthesis in Catharanthus roseus.
植物产生多种次生代谢产物，其中一些被用作药物或作为食品成分具有促进健康的作用。最近关于类黄酮生物合成途径的遗传学研究表明，转录因子是植物代谢工程中用于提高有价值化合物产量的高效新型分子工具。使用特定的转录因子将避免获取关于特征不明确的生物合成途径所有酶促步骤的知识这一耗时的步骤。尽管对于大多数植物物种来说，遗传方法都很困难，但单途径基因的启动子研究和T-DNA激活标签是分离转录因子的可行替代方法，如长春花中萜类吲哚生物碱生物合成的例子所示。
