Key Laboratory of Bio-resource and Eco-environment of Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610064, China.
Department of Metabolic Biology, John Innes Centre, Norwich NR4 7UH, UK.
Mol Plant. 2018 Jan 8;11(1):47-57. doi: 10.1016/j.molp.2017.09.002. Epub 2017 Sep 8.
Specialized secondary metabolites serve not only to protect plants against abiotic and biotic challenges, but have also been used extensively by humans to combat diseases. Due to the great importance of medicinal plants for health, we need to find new and sustainable ways to improve the production of the specialized metabolites. In addition to direct extraction, recent progress in metabolic engineering of plants offers an alternative supply option. We argue that metabolic engineering for producing the secondary metabolites in plants may have distinct advantages over microbial production platforms, and thus propose new approaches of plant metabolic engineering, which are inspired by an ancient Chinese irrigation system. Metabolic engineering strategies work at three levels: introducing biosynthetic genes, using transcription factors, and improving metabolic flux including increasing the supply of precursors, energy, and reducing power. In addition, recent progress in biotechnology contributes markedly to better engineering, such as the use of specific promoters and the deletion of competing branch pathways. We propose that next-generation plant metabolic engineering will improve current engineering strategies, for the purpose of producing valuable metabolites in plants on industrial scales.
特殊的次生代谢物不仅可以保护植物免受非生物和生物的挑战，而且也被人类广泛用于对抗疾病。由于药用植物对健康非常重要，我们需要找到新的和可持续的方法来提高次生代谢产物的产量。除了直接提取，植物代谢工程的最新进展提供了另一种供应选择。我们认为，在植物中生产次生代谢物的代谢工程可能比微生物生产平台具有明显的优势，因此提出了新的植物代谢工程方法，这些方法受到中国古代灌溉系统的启发。代谢工程策略在三个层面上起作用：引入生物合成基因、使用转录因子以及改善代谢通量，包括增加前体、能量和还原力的供应。此外，生物技术的最新进展为更好的工程提供了显著的贡献，例如使用特定的启动子和删除竞争分支途径。我们提出，下一代植物代谢工程将改进当前的工程策略，以实现工业规模上在植物中生产有价值的代谢物。
