Genetic engineering and manipulation of metabolite pathways in Salvia spp.

Abstract

Plants from the genus Salvia have been recognized as medicinal herbs all over the world since earliest times. They are known to accumulate diverse range of bioactive phytochemicals, including polyphenols (rosmarinic and salvianolic acids), triterpenes (ursolic and oleanolic acids), diterpenes (tanshinones, carnosic acid), flavonoids and sterols, etc. Nowadays, the powerful methods of genetic and metabolic engineering, synthetic biology and combinatorial biosynthesis have been widely applied for improvement of commercial crops yields and for increasing their medicinal value by modulating the accumulation of biologically active phytochemicals. Over the past few years, these techniques have been applied in Salvia plants and in vitro systems, but the research still remains limited to few species. In this chapter, we summarized the recent achievements in genetic engineering of Salvia species, with special attention on metabolite engineering of phenolic biosynthesis and terpenoids biosynthesis pathways. Some aspects of the applications of functional genes, cloned by Salvia species, for the needs of synthetic biology and combinatorial biosynthesis are reviewed as well.