植物次生代谢物途径及其研究进展

植物次生代谢是植物在长期进化过程中与环境相互作用的结果,由初生代谢派生。萜类、生物碱类、苯丙烷类为植物次生代谢物的主要类型,其代谢途径多以代谢频道形式存在,具有种属、生长发育期等特异性。从植物次生代谢物的分类、代谢途径及代谢调控基因工程等方面展开论述,重点介绍了次生代谢物的生物合成途径,以及利用基因工程等技术对植物次生代谢途径进行遗传改良等方面的研究进展,为全面认识植物代谢网络、合理定位次生代谢及其关键酶、促进野生植物资源可持续利用等提供理论依据。     

基于高通量测序的“紫娟”茶树叶片miRNA分析

"紫娟"是特异的茶树资源,含有丰富的次生代谢物儿茶素、花青素、黄酮等,其生物合成是由多条代谢途径通过相应的节点连在一起的网络途径,受到多种结构基因和调控基因的控制。Micro RNA又称miRNA,是一种非编码RNAs,能通过对基因表达的调控来调节植物生长、发育以及次生代谢等许多方面。本研究利用高通量测序技术分别构建了"紫娟"茶树芽、第二叶、开面叶、成熟叶的miRNA文库并进行测序,鉴定出已知的miRNA 126个,分为26个家族,预测到的新miRNA 119个。基于"紫娟"茶树转录组数据分析已知miRNA和新miRNA分的靶基因,分别预测到靶基因724条和2 285条。预测的靶基因大多为转录因子,包括调控次生代谢物花青素、黄酮类生物合成的MYB、b HLH转录因子等。这些注释信息的完成为后期研究miRNA在调控茶树叶片发育和次生代谢物的生物合成提供理论依据。     

bZIP转录因子调控植物次生代谢产物生物合成的研究进展

植物次生代谢产物是通过次生代谢产生的一类小分子有机化合物,是植物适应环境的表现,次生代谢产物也是重要药物和化工原料的来源。bZIP转录因子是普遍存在于真核生物中的一类多基因家族,可有效调控植物次生代谢产物的生物合成。本文概述了植物bZIP转录因子的结构和类型,重点阐述了bZIP转录因子调控萜类、黄酮类和生物碱等植物次生代谢产物生物合成的研究进展,并对研究前景进行了展望。深入探讨bZIP转录因子的调控机制,有助于利用基因工程技术优化植物次生代谢途径,提高次生代谢产物的含量,在新药创制、工农业生产等方面具有广泛的应用前景。     

烟草黄酮类化合物的代谢及其调控机制

黄酮类化合物是一类次生代谢产物,分子量较低,广泛存在于植物界,与花色的形成、UV防护、抵抗病原体及调节植物生长等密切相关,也是衡量烟草和卷烟质量的一项重要指标。黄酮类化合物的积累是编码类黄酮生物合成途径的结构基因协同表达的结果,而结构基因通常由MYB、b HLH、WDR等调节基因控制。目前已经鉴定出参与黄酮类化合物生物合成和调控的大多数基因。本综述系统地总结和阐述了类黄酮的生物合成途径及其重要基因的调控机制,展望了未来烟草黄酮类物质研究中值得关注的方向,对从分子水平上更好的探索类黄酮的生物合成及其调节具有重要的意义。     

植物芪类合成途径相关酶、基因和调控机制研究进展

植物芪类化合物,是一类具有抗菌植保作用的次生代谢产物,因具有抑菌、抗氧化、抗肿瘤等多种生物活性而越来越受到重视。本文对植物芪类生物合成途径中涉及到的相关酶、基因和代谢调控机制的研究现状和应用系统生物学研究芪类生物合成途径的相关酶、基因的方法进行综述,并讨论了芪类生物合成相关酶、基因研究的重要意义和应用,以期为调节芪类产量、满足药用保健需求及植物防御、作物品质改良提供帮助。     

植物挥发性物质及其代谢工程

植物挥发性物质在植物之间和植物与昆虫间的化学通讯中起着重要作用.有关这些次生物质的生物合成、代谢调控、生理功能以及与环境相互作用的研究近十多年来取得了重要进展.迄今为止,已经有3 0多种植物挥发性物质的合成酶基因被克隆.这些基因调控着植物萜类、芳香化合物、脂肪酸衍生物这三大类主要挥发性物质的生物合成.由于潜在的应用价值,近几年该领域颇受注目,特别是应用基因工程技术设计植物释放特殊气味物质,诸如特定的驱避剂或者其它控制植物或昆虫行为的特殊气味乃至与人类健康相关的药用气味物质.该文就植物挥发性物质的生物合成、生理和生态功能以及基因工程方面的研究进展作一概述.     

几种重要植物次生代谢防御反应物质的生物合成途径及分子调控机制研究进展

参与植物防御反应相关的次生代谢产物主要有酚类、萜类和生物碱类.近几年,随着转录组学、蛋白组学及新的分子生物学技术的广泛应用,极大地推进了植物次生代谢防御反应物质调控机制的研究进展.我们从这几类次生代谢物质的合成途径及其参与植物防御反应的分子调控机制两大方面进行概述,重点介绍这三类具有防御作用的次生代谢产物的生物合成途径、参与介导植物防御反应的相关信号分子及其转录调控机制,为正确认识植物次生代谢防御反应提供理论据.     

植物次生代谢基因工程

植物次生代谢基因工程,是利用基因工程技术对植物次生代谢途径的遗传特性进行改造,进而改变植物次生代谢产物。植物次生代谢基因工程的出现是人类对次生代谢途径的深入了解和分子生物学向纵深发展的结果,同时它又促进了次生代谢分子生物学的发展。调控因子的应用和多基因的协同转化为植物次生代谢基因工程拓宽了思路。从次生代谢图谱、植物基因工程策略和植物转基因方法等方面对植物次生代谢的基因工程研究进展做一简要概述。     

参与植物次生代谢调控的转录因子及其在植物次生代谢遗传改良中的应用

转录因子与结构基因的结合,激活合成基因的表达是次生代谢物合成途径启动前的重要分子事件,对植物次生代谢起着十分重要的调节作用。转录因了可激活次牛代谢物合成途径中多个基因协同表达,从而有效启动次生代谢途径。因此,转录因子为揭示植物次生代谢调控机制提供重要工具,转录因子的基因工程可为植物次生代谢的遗传改良提供有效的手段。     

植物次生代谢途径的遗传操作

植物次生代谢产物种类极其丰富,是人类的宝贵资源,这些产物及其合成途径相关酶具有空间特异性分布的特征。植物次生代谢途径的调控是个复杂的过程,受代谢产物水平、多酶复合物相互作用等多种因素的影响。通过遗传操作改造代谢过程,调控产物在植物体内的含量,是一条切实可行和具有广阔发展空间的途径。目前,改造植物次生代谢途径可以采取单基因操作和多基因操作两种策略进行。     

代谢基因工程提高作物产量的分子靶标

应用基因工程技术对植物细胞内的代谢途径进行遗传修饰,已成功地使细胞代谢发生改变或合成新的化合物。光合作用,淀粉合成,氮素同化和水分利用等是形成作物产量的基础代谢。对这些代谢途径中的关键步骤和靶分子进行基因修饰以提高作物产量的研究已取得长足的进展,并正在发展成为提高作物产量的新途径。本文着重论述应用代谢基因工程提高作物产量的技术策略,研究现状,存在的问题,所面临的挑战和应用前景。     

Application of cell technologies for production of plant-derived bioactive substances of plant origin

Bioactive substances (BAS) of plant origin are known to play a very important role in modern medicine. Their use, however, is often limited by availability of plant resources and may jeopardize rare species of medicinal plants. Plant cell cultures can serve as a renewable source of valuable secondary metabolites. To the date, however, only few examples of their commercial use are known. The main reasons for such a situation are the insufficient production of secondary metabolites and high cultivation costs. It is possible to increase the performance of plant cell cultures by one or two orders of magnitude using traditional methods, such as selection of highly productive strains, optimization of the medium composition, elicitation, and addition of precursors of secondary metabolite biosynthesis. The progress in molecular biology methods brought about the advent of new means for increasing of the productivity of cell cultures based on the methods of metabolic engineering. Thus, overexpression of genes encoding the enzymes involved in the synthesis of the target product or, by contrast, repression of these genes significantly influences the cell biosynthetic capacity in vitro. Nevertheless, the attempts of the production of many secondary metabolites in plant cell culture were unsuccessful so far, probably due to the peculiarities of the cell culture as an artificial population of plant somatic cells. The use of plant organ culture or transformed roots (hairy root) could turn to be a considerably more efficient solution for this problem. The production of plant-derived secondary metabolites in yeast or bacteria transformed with plant genes is being studied currently. Although the attempts to use metabolic engineering methods were not particularly successful so far, new insights in biochemistry and physiology of secondary metabolism, particularly in regulation and compartmentation of secondary metabolite synthesis as well as mechanisms of their transport and storage make these approaches promising.     

Metabolic Engineering of Tropane Alkaloid Biosynthesis in Plants

Over the past decade, the evolving commercial importance of so-called plant secondary metabolites has resulted in a great interest in secondary metabolism and, particularly, in the possibilities to enhance the yield of fine metabolites by means of genetic engineering. Plant alkaloids, which constitute one of the largest groups of natural products, provide many pharmacologically active compounds. Several genes in the tropane alkaloids biosynthesis pathways have been cloned, making the metabolic engineering of these alkaloids possible. The content of the target chemical scopolamine could be significantly increased by various approaches, such as introducing genes encoding the key biosynthetic enzymes or genes encoding regulatory proteins to overcome the specific rate-limiting steps. In addition, antisense genes have been used to block competitive pathways. These investigations have opened up new, promising perspectives for increased production in plants or plant cell culture. Recent achievements have been made in the metabolic engineering of plant tropane alkaloids and some new powerful strategies are reviewed in the present paper.     

Metabolic Engineering of Tropane Alkaloid Biosynthesis in Plants

Over the past decade, the evolving commercial importance of so-called plant secondary metabolites has resulted in a great interest in secondary metabolism and, particularly, in the possibilities to enhance the yield of fine metabolites by means of genetic engineering. Plant alkaloids, which constitute one of the largest groups of natural products, provide many pharmacologically active compounds. Several genes in the tropane alkaloids biosynthesis pathways have been cloned, making the metabolic engineering of these alkaloids possible. The content of the target chemical scopolamine could be significantly increased by various approaches, such as introducing genes encoding the key biosynthetic enzymes or genes encoding regulatory proteins to overcome the specific rate-limiting steps. In addition, antisense genes have been used to block competitive pathways. These investigations have opened up new, promising perspectives for increased production in plants or plant cell culture. Recent achievements have been made in the metabolic engineering of plant tropane alkaloids and some new powerful strategies are reviewed in the present paper.     

Advances in chloroplast engineering

The chloroplast is a pivotal organelle in plant cells and eukaryotic algae to carry out photosynthesis, which provides the primary source of the world＇s food. The expression of foreign genes in chloroplasts offers several advantages over their expression in the nucleus： high-level expression, transgene stacking in operons and a lack of epigenetic interference allowing stable transgene expression. In addition, transgenic chloroplasts are generally not transmitted through pollen grains because of the cytoplasmic localization. In the past two decades, great progress in chloroplast engineering has been made. In this paper, we review and highlight recent studies of chloroplast engineering, including chloroplast transformation procedures, controlled expression of plastid transgenes in plants, the expression of foreign genes for improvement of plant traits, the production of biopharmaceuticals, metabolic pathway engineering in plants, plastid transformation to study RNA editing, and marker gene excision system.     

Improvement of hairy root cultures and plants by changing biosynthetic pathways leading to pharmaceutical metabolites: Strategies and applications

A plethora of bioactive plant metabolites has been explored for pharmaceutical, food chemistry and agricultural applications. The chemical synthesis of these structures is often difficult, so plants are favorably used as producers. While whole plants can serve as a source for secondary metabolites and can be also improved by metabolic engineering, more often cell or organ cultures of relevant plant species are of interest. It should be noted that only in few cases the production for commercial application in such cultures has been achieved. Their genetic manipulation is sometimes faster and the production of a specific metabolite is more reliable, because of less environmental influences. In addition, upscaling in bioreactors is nowadays possible for many of these cultures, so some are already used in industry. There are approaches to alter the profile of metabolites not only by using plant genes, but also by using bacterial genes encoding modifying enzymes. Also, strategies to cope with unwanted or even toxic compounds are available. The need for metabolic engineering of plant secondary metabolite pathways is increasing with the rising demand for (novel) compounds with new bioactive properties. Here, we give some examples of recent developments for the metabolic engineering of plants and organ cultures, which can be used in the production of metabolites with interesting properties.     

Opportunities for yeast metabolic engineering: Lessons from synthetic biology

Constant progress in genetic engineering has given rise to a number of promising areas of research that facilitated the expansion of industrial biotechnology. The field of metabolic engineering, which utilizes genetic tools to manipulate microbial metabolism to enhance the production of compounds of interest, has had a particularly strong impact by providing new platforms for chemical production. Recent developments in synthetic biology promise to expand the metabolic engineering toolbox further by creating novel biological components for pathway design. The present review addresses some of the recent advances in synthetic biology and how these have the potential to affect metabolic engineering in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. While S. cerevisiae for years has been a robust industrial organism and the target of multiple metabolic engineering trials, its potential for synthetic biology has remained relatively unexplored and further research in this field could strongly contribute to industrial biotechnology. This review also addresses are general considerations for pathway design, ranging from individual components to regulatory systems, overall pathway considerations and whole-organism engineering, with an emphasis on potential contributions of synthetic biology to these areas. Some examples of applications for yeast synthetic biology and metabolic engineering are also discussed.