SMARTCELL

Rational design of plant systems for sustainable generation of value-added industrial products

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'Plants sustainably produce low levels of secondary metabolites of high industrial value. However, they are often too complex to be economically manufactured by chemical synthesis. Advanced metabolic engineering and exploitation of plants as Green Factories has been prevented due to poorly understood metabolic pathways in plants and the regulation thereof. SmartCell brings together 14 leading European academic laboratories and four industrial partners in order to create a novel concept for rationally engineering plants towards improved economical production of high-value compounds for non-food industrial use. Although SmartCell focuses on terpenoids, the largest class of secondary metabolites, which exhibit extremely diverse biological and pharmaceutical activities, all knowledge, tools and resources developed in the project, are generic and broadly applicable to engineer any plant biosynthetic pathway. A systems biology approach using metabolomics and transcriptomics is taken to move beyond the state of the art. New multigene transfer technologies are developed. By screening and functionally categorizing genes at structural, regulatory and transport levels a comprehensive knowledge base of how secondary metabolite biosynthetic pathways operate in plants is developed. The case study component i.e. manufacturing a valuable terpenoid in an optimized large-scale system gives SmartCell a unique opportunity to directly make transition from fundamental science to application. For long-term exploitation an integrated database, compound library, cell culture collection and a genebank available for academic and industrial communities will be established. SmartCell provides new opportunities for SMEs and established European biotech companies, and the technology can also be transferred to other e.g. fine chemical and pharmaceutical industries. SmartCell will prove that plant-based resources can furnish the European society and industry far more than they presently do.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

Plants produce small quantities of tiny molecules that are of great value to the pharmaceutical industry. Novel metabolic engineering techniques are opening the door to sustainable large-scale plant-based bioproduction.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

While the quantity of compounds produced by plants is perfect for them, it is too little to be useful to pharmaceutical companies. These molecules are highly complex and often similar to other less useful ones produced by the plants, making them difficult and expensive to isolate and extract.

The EU-funded project 'Rational design of plant systems for sustainable generation of value-added industrial products' (http://www.smart-cell.org/ (SMARTCELL)) developed new enabling techniques for industrial-scale exploitation of valuable plant secondary metabolites.

Scientists applied novel techniques to untangle the genes and products of the terpenoid indole alkaloid pathway to obtain secondary metabolites with pharmaceutical properties. Starting with a medicinal periwinkle plant that produces small amounts of the compounds of interest, researchers were able to find functional links among genes, enzymes and molecules. Using multigene transformations developed by partners, they then introduced the relevant genes into plant cells to test activity. With advanced and innovative analytical techniques, the team confirmed gene functions and production of target compounds.

The genes were then expressed in organisms such as bacteria, fast-growing tobacco, as well as hairy root cultures and cell suspensions that can be grown continuously. Novel bioinformatics tools were developed to measure and characterise spectral differences between groups of tobacco and periwinkle with different genotypes and growth conditions. The hairy root and cell suspension cultures provided the highest yields of geraniol, a target secondary metabolite, with production of approximately one gram within 41 days.

Advanced techniques and cost-effective production pathways open the door to produce limitless number of chemicals from equally unlimited types of plants. SMARTCELL has thus laid the groundwork for development of industrial-scale sustainable production of plant-based molecules of pharmaceutical relevance using biotechnological systems while meeting the highest regulatory standards.