Not AvailableBiotechnology is playing a vital alternative
role in the production of pharmaceutical plant secondary
metabolites to support industrial production and mitigate
over-exploitation of natural sources. High-value pharmaceuticals
that include alkaloids, flavonoids, terpenes, steroids,
among others, are biosynthesized as a defensive strategy
by plants in response to perturbations under natural environmental
conditions. However, they can also be produced
using plant cell, tissue, and organ culture techniques through
the application of various in vitro approaches and strategies.
In the past decades, efforts were on the clonal propagation,
biomass and secondary metabolites production in the in vitro
cultures of medicinally important plants that produce these
molecules. In recent years, the effort has shifted towards
optimizing culture conditions for their production through
the application of cell line selection, elicitation, precursor
feeding, two-phase co-culture among cell, tissue, and organ
culture approaches. The efforts are made with the possibility
to scale-up the production, meet pharmaceutical industry
demand and conserve natural sources of the molecules.Applications of metabolic engineering and production from
endophytes are also getting increasing attention but, the
approaches are far from practical application in their industrial
production.Not Availabl