• Oksman-Caldentey, Kirsi-Marja
• Inze, Dirk

Abstract

We developed a novel technology platform that allows the high throughputselecting and testing of genes involved in the production of plant secondarymetabolites. It can be applied (i) to enhance the production of marketedhigh-value pharmaceuticals in plant cell cultures (ii) to develop reliable andreproducible sources of plant-derived molecules with potential pharmaceuticalvalue, and (iii) to increase the chemical diversity of plant based moleculesthrough Combinatorial Biochemistry.We designed this novel approach using tobacco BY-2 cell culture as a modelsystem, in which a cDNA-AFLP based transcript profiling technique is linkedwith targeted metabolite profiling of these cells to simultaneously identifygenes involved in nicotine alkaloid metabolism on a genome-wide scale. A fewexamples will be given of how overexpressing some novel genes can be usedeither to tailor cell cultures to enhance the production of nicotine alkaloidsor to direct biosynthetic pathways in related plant species. Furthermore,these novel genes may play an important role in secondary metabolism as masterregulators in general. The great advantage of our technology is its universalapplication to any plant or cell culture of interest (e.g. rare medicinalplants) without pre-existing gene sequence databases.

Topics

• impedance spectroscopy