Food Futures National Research Flagship , CSIRO Plant Industry, PO Box 1600, Canberra, ACT 2601 , Australia.
AoB Plants. 2011;2011:plr011. doi: 10.1093/aobpla/plr011. Epub 2011 Apr 18.
Algae are becoming an increasingly important component of land plant metabolic engineering projects. Land plants and algae have similar enough genetics to allow relatively straightforward gene transfer and they also share enough metabolic similarities that algal enzymes often function in a plant cell environment. Understanding metabolic systems in algae can provide insights into homologous systems in land plants. As examples, algal models are currently being used by several groups to better understand starch and lipid metabolism and catabolism, fields which have relevance in land plants. Importantly, land plants and algae also have enough metabolic divergence that algal genes can often provide new metabolic traits to plants. Furthermore, many algal genomes have now been sequenced, with many more in progress, and this easy access to genome-wide information has revealed that algal genomes are often relatively simple when compared with plants.
One example of the importance of algal, and in particular microalgal, resources to land plant research is the metabolic engineering of long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids into oilseed crops which typically uses microalgal genes to extend existing natural plant biosynthetic pathways. This review describes both recent progress and remaining challenges in this field.
藻类正成为陆地植物代谢工程项目中越来越重要的组成部分。陆地植物和藻类的遗传物质足够相似，允许相对直接的基因转移，它们也有足够多的代谢相似性，以至于藻类酶通常在植物细胞环境中发挥作用。了解藻类中的代谢系统可以为同源系统在陆地植物中的研究提供见解。例如，藻类模型目前正被多个研究小组用于更好地理解淀粉和脂质代谢和分解代谢，这些领域与陆地植物相关。重要的是，陆地植物和藻类的代谢也有足够的差异，以至于藻类基因通常可以为植物提供新的代谢特性。此外，许多藻类基因组已经测序，还有更多的正在进行中，并且这种对基因组范围信息的便捷访问表明，与植物相比，藻类基因组通常相对简单。
藻类（特别是微藻）资源对陆地植物研究的重要性的一个例子是将长链多不饱和脂肪酸代谢工程引入油籽作物，这通常利用微藻基因来扩展现有的天然植物生物合成途径。本综述描述了该领域的最新进展和仍存在的挑战。
