Jiang Ling, Wang Weixuan, Lian Tong, Zhang Chunyi
Biotechnology Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural SciencesBeijing, China.
National Key Facility for Crop Gene Resources and Genetic ImprovementBeijing, China.
Front Plant Sci. 2017 Jun 6;8:937. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2017.00937. eCollection 2017.
Vitamin deficiencies are major forms of micronutrient deficiencies, and are associated with huge economic losses as well as severe physical and intellectual damages to humans. Much evidence has demonstrated that biofortification plays an important role in combating vitamin deficiencies due to its economical and effective delivery of nutrients to populations in need. Biofortification enables food plants to be enriched with vitamins through conventional breeding and/or biotechnology. Here, we focus on the progress in the manipulation of the vitamin metabolism, an essential part of biofortification, by the genetic modification or by the marker-assisted selection to understand mechanisms underlying metabolic improvement in food plants. We also propose to integrate new breeding technologies with metabolic pathway modification to facilitate biofortification in food plants and, thereby, to benefit human health.
维生素缺乏是微量营养素缺乏的主要形式，与巨大的经济损失以及对人类严重的身体和智力损害相关。大量证据表明，生物强化因其以经济有效的方式为有需要的人群提供营养，在对抗维生素缺乏方面发挥着重要作用。生物强化能够通过传统育种和/或生物技术使食用植物富含维生素。在此，我们重点关注通过基因改造或标记辅助选择对维生素代谢（生物强化的一个重要部分）进行调控的进展，以了解食用植物代谢改善的潜在机制。我们还提议将新的育种技术与代谢途径修饰相结合，以促进食用植物的生物强化，从而造福人类健康。
