Regulation of the Active Constituents’ Production of Medicinal Plants

Abstract

The biosystem includes microbe, suspended cells of plants, transgenic organs, and other transforming systems. The biological transformation is to use the enzymes produced by the biosystem for catalyzed reactions of exogenous compounds, which has been widely used in the structural modifications of secondary metabolic products of plants, the search for the active leading compounds, and the explorations of drug structure-activity relations. This is called green chemistry.

The plant genetic engineering includes the development of crown gall nodules, hairy roots, and other transgenic organs. After being infected by Agrobacterium tumefaciens, the T-DNA fragments in the Ti plasmid of plant are integrated into the genome of the nucleus to induce and form into the crown gall nodules. The hairy roots are the special type induced by the infection of A. rhizogenesto the dicotyledonous plants. The plants with crown gall nodules and hairy roots will have a large amount of secondary metabolic products.