Objective
Plant secondary metabolites are extensively used as flavours, fragrances, pigments and medicines by the food and pharmaceutical industries. Even with contemporary advances in synthetic organic chemistry, plants are the main source of over 25X of all prescription medicines Availability and quality of raw material depend on climatic factors, sacristy of the species, and geography of the area of plant growth which can sometimes include remote and politically unstable regions. Clearly the cultivation of such species must be encouraged and this depends also on the existence of commercialy competitive genotypes. Secondary metabolite accumulation in tissue or cell cultures of most plant species is usually orders of magnitude lower than that in the intact plant. Transciptional inactivation of key regulatory genes of secondary metabolism has been postulated to take place in cultured tissues.
As long as the mechanism of inactivation remains unknown significant progress in the field of biotechnology for in vitro secondary metabolite production will be slow depending on accidental mutations resulting in overproducing somaclones. We have chosen rose essential oil production as our model system because of the relative simplicity of the biosynthetic pathway, the easy identification of the oil ingredients, and the commercial interest in this species. Rose oil contains monoterpenes used extensively in the cosmetics industry. Their synthesis, as well as that of other secondary metabolites, is affected by biotic and abiotic stresses. Potential second messengers, common to the signal transduction pathways of the various inducing treatments, are free radicals, lipid peroxides, and their derivatives.
Measurable objective.
Objective 1: Improve rose essential oil yield by introducing overexpressed regulatory genes of terpenoid synthesis and by using antisense technology to down-regulate genes of the free radical and peroxide scavenging system. Higher oil yield is expected if availability of these signal transducing molecules is the limiting factor.
Objective 2: Identify trans-acting factors activating regulatory genes of the monoterpene synthesis path. In a future step, altered, constitutively transcribed forms of trans-acting factor genes could uncouple gene expression from normal signal transduction path component requirements and result in unhindered terpenoid production in in vitro cultures as well as in field~grown plants.
Complying with the objectives of the Agriculture ant Flsherles programme Workplan. Section 12.1 of the 'green' chemical ant polymer chain subarea of area I of the Agriculture and Fisheries programme, covers proposals for genetically improving the quality and content of plant speciality products, including volatile oils, and devising economical methods to ensure their stability of supply and quality. Improved yield/quality, as well stable supply can be ensured by extensive cultivation of proper genotypes as well as by successful in vitro production. Also, section 4.3.1 of area 4 deals with speciality products and asks for the improvement of specific characteristics of aromatic plants. The proposal is relevant to both areas.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural scienceschemical sciencesorganic chemistry
- medical and health sciencesmedical biotechnologygenetic engineering
- natural scienceschemical sciencespolymer sciences
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiochemistrybiomoleculeslipids
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesgeneticsmutation
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Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
73100 Chania
Greece