Molecular characterization of secondary metabolic pathways.

摘要: Transformation technology is being utilized to introduce into plants a variety of genes of known function in order to alter metabolic pathways. The production of precisely altered plants has generated commercially useful phenotypes such as novel flower colours, increased starch accumulation and increased levels of secondary metabolites. This spectacular success has been tempered with unexpected results obtained in some cases where knowledge of biochemical pathways is insufficient to accurately predict the outcome. Selected examples of recent plant metabolic engineering efforts are given in this short review and the need to develop rational approaches to the design of experiments is discussed.