Production and engineering of terpenoids in plant cell culture

Abstract

Terpenoids are a diverse class of natural products that have many functions in the plant kingdom and in human health and nutrition. Their chemical diversity has led to the discovery of over 40,000 different structures, with several classes serving as important pharmaceutical agents, including the anticancer agents paclitaxel (Taxol) and terpenoid-derived indole alkaloids. Many terpenoid compounds are found in low yield from natural sources, so plant cell cultures have been investigated as an alternate production strategy. Metabolic engineering of whole plants and plant cell cultures is an effective tool to both increase terpenoid yield and alter terpenoid distribution for desired properties such as enhanced flavor, fragrance or color. Recent advances in defining terpenoid metabolic pathways, particularly in secondary metabolism, enhanced knowledge concerning regulation of terpenoid accumulation, and application of emerging plant systems biology approaches, have enabled metabolic engineering of terpenoid production. This paper reviews the current state of knowledge of terpenoid metabolism, with a special focus on production of important pharmaceutically active secondary metabolic terpenoids in plant cell cultures. Strategies for defining pathways and uncovering rate-influencing steps in global metabolism, and applying this information for successful terpenoid metabolic engineering, are emphasized.

Biosynthesis of the microtubule-destabilizing diterpene pseudolaric acid B from golden larch involves an unusual diterpene synthase

“…Exploring this space has the potential to contribute to devising therapeutic lead compounds in the face of drug discovery over recent decades having fallen short of meeting the demand for new and improved therapies (32). Currently, only a few plant-derived diterpene pharmaceuticals, including Taxol and forskolin, are available at industrial scale (4,33,34) because of the often low availability of diterpenes from natural sources or uneconomic chemical synthesis.…”

Dynamic maize responses to aphid feeding are revealed by a time series of transcriptomic and metabolomic assays

“…Terpene synthases catalyze key steps in the formation of the terpene carbon skeleton (Roberts, 2007). The aphid-induced B73 transcriptome showed that four genes encoding terpene synthases were significantly induced by aphid feeding (Supplemental Table S2; Fig.…”

In vitro trypanocidal activity of the Egyptian plant Schinopsis lorentizii against trypomastigote and amastigote forms of Trypanosoma cruzi

“…Terpenoids are a class of natural substances with various biological applications (Roberts, 2007). Their in vitro and in vivo trypanocidal potential has been extensively studied (Duarte et al, 2002;Rosas et al, 2007;Ferreira et al, 2013).…”