Plants have evolved a vast chemical cornucopia to support their sessile lifestyles. Man has exploited this natural resource since Neolithic times and currently plant-derived chemicals are exploited for a myriad of applications. However, plant sources of most high-value natural products (NPs) are not domesticated and therefore their production cannot be undertaken on an agricultural scale. Further, these plant species are often slow growing, their populations limiting, the concentration of the target molecule highly variable and routinely present at extremely low concentrations. Plant cell and organ culture constitutes a sustainable, controllable and environmentally friendly tool for the industrial production of plant NPs. Further, advances in cell line selection, biotransformation, product secretion, cell permeabilisation, extraction and scale-up, among others, are driving increases in plant NP yields. However, there remain significant obstacles to the commercial synthesis of high-value chemicals from these sources. The relatively recent isolation, culturing and characterisation of cambial meristematic cells (CMCs), provides an emerging platform to circumvent many of these potential difficulties. [BMB Reports 2016; 49(3): 149-158]
Humans have utilised plant derived natural products as medicines for millenia. Moreover, many contemporary pharmaceuticals are also natural products or derivatives thereof. However, the full potential of these compounds remains to be exploited because often they are: complex and difficult to synthesise; found in low quantities; produced by undomesticated and sometimes rare plants; and, their synthesis is routinely influenced by weather conditions. Potentially, the in vitro culture of cells from the corresponding plant species could circumvent some of these problems but the growth of plant cells on an industrial scale is also problematic. The recent isolation and culture of cambial meristematic cells (CMCs), stem cells which ordinarily generate the plant vasculature, may now provide a key platform technology to help realise the full potential of plant natural products.
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