Advances in study on secondary metabolic engineering of alkaloids in medicinal plants / 中草药

ABSTRACT

Since the weak research basis on metabolic pathway and regulation mechanism of medicinal plants, obtaining valuable secondary metabolites from medicinal plants by metabolic engineering technology is seriously impacted. Alkaloids are nitrogen heterocyclic compounds in medicinal plants, which have pharmacological effects, such as anti-tumor, anti-microbial, anti-hypotensive, spasmolysis analgesia, etc. It is valuable for optimizing the germplasm resource of medicinal plants and their sustainable development by using metabolic engineering methods to influence the metabolic pathways in order to increase the content of secondary metabolites. The synthetic metabolic pathways about alkaloids of medicinal plants were reviewed in this paper, as well as research methods and regulation strategies, for giving some references to relative studies on alkaloids from medicinal plants.