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Title: Exploring Uncharted Territories of Plant Specialized Metabolism in the Postgenomic Era
For millennia, humans have used plants for food, raw materials, and medicines, but only within the past two centuries have we begun to connect particular plant metabolites with specific properties and utilities. Since the utility of classical molecular genetics beyond model species is limited, the vast specialized metabolic systems present in the Earth's flora remain largely unstudied. With an explosion in genomics resources and a rapidly expanding toolbox over the past decade, exploration of plant specialized metabolism in nonmodel species is becoming more feasible than ever before. We review the state-of-the-art tools that have enabled this rapid progress. We present recent examples of de novo biosynthetic pathway discovery that employ various innovative approaches. We also draw attention to the higher-order organization of plant specialized metabolism at subcellular, cellular, tissue, interorgan, and interspecies levels, which will have important implications for the future design of comprehensive metabolic engineering strategies.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1709616
PAR ID:
10166487
Author(s) / Creator(s):
;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Annual Review of Plant Biology
Volume:
71
Issue:
1
ISSN:
1543-5008
Page Range / eLocation ID:
631 to 658
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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