Plant tissue culture and regeneration

Plant tissue culture and regeneration, at the molecular level, examines how isolated plant cells and tissues can be coaxed to proliferate, differentiate, and produce specialized chemical compounds outside the whole organism. A central focus is understanding how plants synthesize secondary metabolites — compounds like terpenoid indole alkaloids that have no direct role in growth but hold significant pharmaceutical and industrial value — and how techniques such as hairy root culture, somatic embryogenesis, and Agrobacterium-mediated transformation can be used to engineer and scale that production. Elicitation, the process of triggering metabolite biosynthesis by exposing cultures to specific chemical or biological signals, has revealed intricate signal transduction networks that researchers are still working to map and manipulate with precision. Open questions center on how to reliably translate laboratory-scale genetic interventions into stable, high-yield production systems, and how the regulatory logic governing secondary metabolism in intact plants can be reconstructed — or deliberately rewritten — in cultured cells.

Works

177,648

Total citations

2,405,611

Keywords

Plant Secondary MetabolitesAgrobacterium-Mediated TransformationElicitationSomatic EmbryogenesisHairy Root CultureTerpenoid Indole Alkaloids