Plant metabolism genetic engineering

Robins, R. J., Walton, N. J., Parr, A. J., Aird, E. H., Rhodes, J. C., and Hamill, J. D. (1994) Progress in the genetic engineering of the pyridine and tropane alkaloid biosynthetic pathways of Solanaceous plants. In Genetic Engineering of Plant Secondary Metabolism, pp. 1-33, Plenum Press, New York. 

Phytoremediation is the use of plants to clean up environmental pollution. To overcome limitations like the slow rate of removal or incomplete metabolism, new enzymatic activities are introduced in plants by genetic engineering. In several cases, P450s of bacterial or mammalian origin were expressed in plants in order to remediate polluted soil, groundwater, or air [418]. 

Sandmann, G., Rbmer, S., and Eraser, P.D., Understanding carotenoid metabolism as a necessity for genetic engineering of crop plants, Metabol. Eng. 8, 291, 2006. DellaPenna, D., Plant metabolic engineering. Plant Physiol. 125, 160, 2001. Wurtzel, E.T. and Grotewold, E., Plant metabolic engineering, in Encyclopedia of... 

Volume 28 Genetic Engineering of Plant Secondary Metabolism Proceedings of the Thirty-third Annual Meeting of the Phytochemical Society of North America, Pacific Grove, California, June-July, 1993... 

Phytoremediation with living plants may be improved through genetic engineering and a thorough understanding of arsenic metabolism and detoxification in plants (Montes-Baydn et al., 2004). As an initial step, Montes-Bay on et al. (2004) studied arsenic metabolism in Brassica juncea (Indian mustard). They found that some of the arsenic was associated with thiol groups in the plant. 

Advanced genetic engineering techniques are being used to improve existing renewable feedstocks for the production of industrial bioproducts. In some cases, the feedstock composition is modified to increase the content of a desired component and/or decrease the content of an undesired component, whereas in others, a new metabolic pathway is inserted into the plant genes so that the modified plant produces an entirely new component. These research efforts are recent, and very little, if any, published information is currently available. However, we provide brief descriptions of the research activities to give perspective on the opportunities for new industrial bioproducts that may emerge from feedstock modification. 

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