Metabolism, Primary: Engineering Pathways

A.A. IGLESIAS

Encyclopedia of Plant and Crop Science

Marcel Dekker Inc.

Lugar: New York; Año: 2004; p. 714 - 719

Plants are traditional sources of organic materials used by humans for food and many industrial purposes.[1] The relevance of plants as food producers is clear, since their photosynthetic capacity ultimately represents the basis of life on our planet. Main industrially important  compounds obtained from plants are (among others) wood, cotton, cork, and latex. Despite advances in chemical synthesis of organic molecules (i.e., plastics), many plant products are still unique. Thus, production of rubber of a certain quality only utilizes latex as a raw material.In this scenario, the relevance of manipulating plants to improve their synthetic ability is clear. For years, selective breeding allowed increased productivity of crops, but with limitations. The development of genetic engineering expanded possibilities for improvement, as modification of plant metabolic pathways would allow the manipulation of the quantity and quality of naturalproducts and also the synthesis of novel or heterologous compounds.[1,2]The feasibility of plant transformation was firstly utilized for the production of genetically modified crops with enhanced resistance to herbicides and pathogens or with longer postharvest life.[3,4] These transgenic plants importantly affected agriculture, because they allowed reduced  production costs and increased yields.[4] After these advances, efforts centered on modifying specific plant metabolic routes related to the synthetic proficiency of a particular crop.[3,4]