Abstract
Plant cell cultures are an option for producing secondary metabolites
useful for diverse applications although only very few economically feasible
examples exist so far. Engineering of plant cells with functionally tested
genes helps to understand the biosynthetic pathways and is the method of
choice for creating high yielding strains for commercial production.
On a genome wide scale genes involved in plant secondary metabolism are
simultaneously identified and isolated by an approach, in which a cDNA-AFLP
based transcript profiling technique in conjunction with metabolic pathway
profiling is applied. Highly specific RNA fingerprints in function of time are
obtained following elicitation of cell cultures. In parallel the quantitative
and qualitative changes of metabolites involved in selected pathways are
determined by several hyphenated methods (e.g. GC-MS, HPLC-MS). The functional
testing of promising genes obtained from full-length cloning is done by
analyzing the metabolic changes in overexpression/co-suppression experiments
of transformed cells.
A well-defined correlation between the pathway specific metabolites and the
transcriptome was revealed using the model system of tobacco BY-2 cells. In
silico analysis of about 20000 visualised gene tags showed that about 600 were
differentially regulated by the elicitor. The applied analytical methods were
sensitive enough for the investigated secondary compounds but the need for
different extraction processes in order to analyze metabolites from different
biosynthetic branches became obvious from comparing extraction efficiencies.
First experiments with other plant species confirmed that the technology is
principally applicable to any plant or plant cell culture of interest.
Original language | English |
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Publication status | Published - 2003 |
MoE publication type | Not Eligible |
Event | 2nd International Conference Plant Metabolomics - Potsdam, Germany Duration: 25 Apr 2003 → 28 Apr 2003 |
Conference
Conference | 2nd International Conference Plant Metabolomics |
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Country/Territory | Germany |
City | Potsdam |
Period | 25/04/03 → 28/04/03 |