Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA.
Annu Rev Chem Biomol Eng. 2013;4:211-37. doi: 10.1146/annurev-chembioeng-061312-103320. Epub 2013 Mar 27.
Plants are bona fide sustainable organisms because they accumulate carbon and synthesize beneficial metabolites from photosynthesis. To meet the challenges to food security and health threatened by increasing population growth and depletion of nonrenewable natural resources, recent metabolic engineering efforts have shifted from single pathways to holistic approaches with multiple genes owing to integration of omics technologies. Successful engineering of plants results in the high yield of biomass components for primary food sources and biofuel feedstocks, pharmaceuticals, and platform chemicals through synthetic biology and systems biology strategies. Further discovery of undefined biosynthesis pathways in plants, integrative analysis of discrete omics data, and diversified process developments for production of platform chemicals are essential to overcome the hurdles for sustainable production of value-added biomolecules from plants.
植物是真正可持续的生物体，因为它们可以通过光合作用积累碳并合成有益的代谢物。为了应对人口增长和不可再生自然资源枯竭对粮食安全和健康构成的威胁，最近的代谢工程努力已经从单一途径转向了整体方法，整合了组学技术，涉及多个基因。通过合成生物学和系统生物学策略，对植物进行成功的工程改造，可以实现主要食物来源和生物燃料原料、药品和平台化学品的生物质成分的高产。进一步发现植物中未定义的生物合成途径、离散组学数据的综合分析以及平台化学品生产的多样化工艺开发，对于克服从植物中可持续生产有价值生物分子的障碍至关重要。
