Humans have utilized plants as medicines for thousands of years. Plant isoprenoids are a group of functionally diverse compounds and many of them have economic and pharmaceutical value. For example, phytosterols have antioxidant, cholesterol-reducing and anticancer activities; artemisinin have anti-malarial activity; carotenoids and vitamin E display antioxidant and anti-aging activities; and paclitaxel which displays anticancer activities. Many of these compounds are produced by cytosolic mevalonate (MVA) pathway and plastidial 2-C-methyl-D-erythritol 4-phosphate (MEP) pathway. These compounds (natural products) are sources of medicine and dietary nutrients.
Although some progress have been made in the discovery of enzymes and biosynthesis pathways in plants, the biosynthetic pathways for many natural products nutrients and how plants make different kinds of chemicals remain poorly understood. Much less is known about how they are regulated, transported, and released. To improve the understanding of how plants produce diverse chemicals and use this knowledge to discover new drugs and other useful compounds, the mechanisms on how the diversity of chemicals are achieved and how they are produced, regulated, transported, and released in plants need to be investigated through the combination of multi-omics, biochemistry, and evolutionary analyses. Novel connections between the MVA pathway and other metabolic pathways discovered recently in plants, provides an opportunity for a better understanding on this field. This will be useful for the future metabolic engineering of valuable compounds.
We therefore welcome Original Research, Reviews and other article types that provide insight on (but not limited to) to the following areas:
(1) Discovery of novel functional natural products
(2) How functional natural products are biosynthesized in plants
(3) How functional natural products are regulated in plants
(4) How functional natural products are transported and released in plants?
(5) Novel connections between the mevalonate pathway and other metabolic pathways
(6) Application of omics (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics)
Please note that purely descriptive manuscripts that do not provide any real insight into the biology of natural products are outside the scope of this research topic.
Humans have utilized plants as medicines for thousands of years. Plant isoprenoids are a group of functionally diverse compounds and many of them have economic and pharmaceutical value. For example, phytosterols have antioxidant, cholesterol-reducing and anticancer activities; artemisinin have anti-malarial activity; carotenoids and vitamin E display antioxidant and anti-aging activities; and paclitaxel which displays anticancer activities. Many of these compounds are produced by cytosolic mevalonate (MVA) pathway and plastidial 2-C-methyl-D-erythritol 4-phosphate (MEP) pathway. These compounds (natural products) are sources of medicine and dietary nutrients.
Although some progress have been made in the discovery of enzymes and biosynthesis pathways in plants, the biosynthetic pathways for many natural products nutrients and how plants make different kinds of chemicals remain poorly understood. Much less is known about how they are regulated, transported, and released. To improve the understanding of how plants produce diverse chemicals and use this knowledge to discover new drugs and other useful compounds, the mechanisms on how the diversity of chemicals are achieved and how they are produced, regulated, transported, and released in plants need to be investigated through the combination of multi-omics, biochemistry, and evolutionary analyses. Novel connections between the MVA pathway and other metabolic pathways discovered recently in plants, provides an opportunity for a better understanding on this field. This will be useful for the future metabolic engineering of valuable compounds.
We therefore welcome Original Research, Reviews and other article types that provide insight on (but not limited to) to the following areas:
(1) Discovery of novel functional natural products
(2) How functional natural products are biosynthesized in plants
(3) How functional natural products are regulated in plants
(4) How functional natural products are transported and released in plants?
(5) Novel connections between the mevalonate pathway and other metabolic pathways
(6) Application of omics (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics)
Please note that purely descriptive manuscripts that do not provide any real insight into the biology of natural products are outside the scope of this research topic.
