REVIEW article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Metabolism and Chemodiversity
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1597007
This article is part of the Research TopicEvolution, Accumulation and Metabolic Engineering of Plant Secondary MetabolitesView all articles
Unlocking the Potential of Flavonoid Biosynthesis Through Integrated Metabolic Engineering
Provisionally accepted
- 1Jinggangshan University, Ji'an, China
- 2Shanghai Agrobiological Gene Center, Shanghai, Shanghai Municipality, China
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Flavonoids are a diverse class of plant polyphenols with essential roles in development, defense, and environmental adaptation, as well as significant applications in medicine, nutrition, and cosmetics. However, their naturally low abundance in plant tissues poses a major barrier to large-scale utilization. This review provides a comprehensive and forward-looking synthesis of flavonoid biosynthesis, regulation, transport, and yield enhancement strategies. We highlight key advances in understanding transcriptional and epigenetic control of flavonoid pathways, focusing on the roles of MYB, bHLH, and WD40 transcription factors and chromatin modifications. We also examine flavonoid transport mechanisms at cellular and tissue levels, supported by emerging spatial metabolomics data. Distinct from conventional reviews, this review explores how plant cell factories, genome editing, environmental optimization, and artificial intelligence (AI)-driven metabolic engineering can be integrated to boost flavonoid production. By bridging foundational plant science with synthetic biology and digital tools, this review outlines a novel roadmap for sustainable, high-yield flavonoid production with broad relevance to both research and industry.
Keywords: Flavonoid biosynthesis, Transcriptional regulation, plant cell factory, Metabolic Engineering, artificial intelligence
Received: 20 Mar 2025; Accepted: 13 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Chen, He, Yin and Liao. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yonghui Liao, Jinggangshan University, Ji'an, China
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