Journal of
Medicinal Plants Research

  • Abbreviation: J. Med. Plants Res.
  • Language: English
  • ISSN: 1996-0875
  • DOI: 10.5897/JMPR
  • Start Year: 2007
  • Published Articles: 3840

Review

Pattern of gene and enzyme in secondary pathways of medicinal plants

Baratali Siahsar1, Abdol Shakoor Raissi1, Abolfazl Tavassoli2* and Mohammad Rahimi2
1Department of Agriculture, Agriculture Faculty, University of Zabol, Zabol, Iran. 2Department of Agriculture, ShirvanBranch, Islamic Azad University, Shirvan, Iran.
Email: [email protected]

  •  Accepted: 19 September 2011
  •  Published: 09 November 2011

Abstract

Medicinal plants have been the subjects of man’s curiosity since time immemorial. Approximately 80% of the people in the world’s developing countries rely on traditional medicine for their primary health care needs, and about 85% of traditional medicine involves the use of plant extracts. Bioactive compounds currently extracted from plants are used as pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, flavor and fragrance ingredients, food additives, and pesticides. The secondary metabolites are known to play a major role in the adaptation of plants to their environment, but also represent an important source of pharmaceuticals. The utilization of plant cells for the production of natural or recombinant compounds of commercial interest has gained increasing attention over past decades. Tissue culture technology is a new molecular tools for plant metabolic engineering to increase the production of valuable compounds. New genomic approaches and efficient gene isolation methods applied to difficult secondary pathways in medicinal plant metabolism will undoubtedly expand the range and precision of manipulations via transgenesis, providing potentially superior material for the breeder. Understanding of secondary metabolism at the enzyme level is a prerequisite for metabolic engineering of medicinal plants, which potentially leads to yield improvement of pharmaceutically important secondary products. The production of secondary metabolites can be enhanced using bioreactors. Bioreactors offer a great hope for the large-scale synthesis of therapeutically active compounds in medicinal plants.

 

Key words: Enzyme, gene, medicinal plants, secondary pathways.