Engineering the plant metabolic system by exploiting metabolic regulation
Sara Selma, Nikolaos Ntelkis, Tràng Hiếu Nguyen, Alain Goossens
Abstract
Plants are the most sophisticated biofactories and sources of food and biofuels present in nature. By engineering plant metabolism, the production of desired compounds can be increased and the nutritional or commercial value of the plant species can be improved. However, this can be challenging because of the complexity of the regulation of multiple genes and the involvement of different protein interactions. To improve metabolic engineering (ME) capabilities, different tools and strategies for rerouting the metabolic pathways have been developed, including genome editing and transcriptional regulation approaches. In addition, cutting-edge technologies have provided new methods for understanding uncharacterized biosynthetic pathways, protein degradation mechanisms, protein-protein interactions, or allosteric feedback, enabling the design of novel ME approaches.