Tang Kexuan, Shen Qian, Yan Tingxiang, Fu Xueqing
Key Laboratory of Urban Agriculture (South) Ministry of Agriculture, Plant Biotechnology Research Center, Fudan-SJTU-Nottingham Plant Biotechnology R&D Center, School of Agriculture and Biology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, People's Republic of China,
Plant Cell Rep. 2014 Apr;33(4):605-15. doi: 10.1007/s00299-014-1566-y. Epub 2014 Jan 12.
Artemisinin, the endoperoxide sesquiterpene lactone, is an effective antimalarial drug isolated from the Chinese medicinal plant Artemisia annua L. Due to its effectiveness against multi-drug-resistant cerebral malaria, it becomes the essential components of the artemisinin-based combination therapies which are recommended by the World Health Organization as the preferred choice for malaria tropica treatments. To date, plant A. annua is still the main commercial source of artemisinin. Although semi-synthesis of artemisinin via artemisinic acid in yeast is feasible at present, another promising approach to reduce the price of artemisinin is using plant metabolic engineering to obtain a higher content of artemisinin in transgenic plants. In the past years, an Agrobacterium-mediated transformation system of A. annua has been established by which a number of genes related to artemisinin biosynthesis have been successfully transferred into A. annua plants. In this review, the progress on increasing artemisinin content in A. annua by transgenic approach and its future prospect are summarized and discussed.
青蒿素是一种过氧倍半萜内酯，是从中国药用植物黄花蒿中分离出的一种有效的抗疟药物。由于其对多重耐药性脑型疟疾有效，它成为了以青蒿素为基础的联合疗法的重要组成部分，世界卫生组织推荐该联合疗法作为热带疟疾治疗的首选。迄今为止，黄花蒿仍然是青蒿素的主要商业来源。虽然目前通过酵母中合成青蒿酸来半合成青蒿素是可行的，但另一种降低青蒿素价格的有前景的方法是利用植物代谢工程来在转基因植物中获得更高含量的青蒿素。在过去几年中，已经建立了黄花蒿的农杆菌介导转化系统，通过该系统，一些与青蒿素生物合成相关的基因已成功转入黄花蒿植株中。在这篇综述中，总结并讨论了通过转基因方法提高黄花蒿中青蒿素含量的研究进展及其未来前景。
