Medicinal plants play an important dual role in the context of the heterologous expression of high-value pharmaceutical products. On the one hand, the classical biochemical and modern omics approaches allowed for the discovery of various genes encoding biosynthetic pathways in medicinal plants. Recombinant DNA technology enabled introducing these genes and regulatory elements into host organisms and enhancing the heterologous production of the corresponding secondary metabolites. On the other hand, the transient expression of foreign DNA in plants facilitated the production of numerous proteins of pharmaceutical importance. This review summarizes several success stories of the engineering of plant metabolic pathways in heterologous hosts. Likewise, a few examples of recombinant protein expression in plants for therapeutic purposes are also highlighted. Therefore, the importance of medicinal plants has grown immensely as sources for valuable products of low and high molecular weight. The next step ahead for bioengineering is to achieve more success stories of industrial-scale production of secondary plant metabolites in microbial systems and to fully exploit plant cell factoriesʼ commercial potential for recombinant proteins.

中文翻译：

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药用植物：高价值产品异源表达中的嘉宾和主人

药用植物在高价值药品异源表达的背景下发挥着重要的双重作用。一方面，经典的生化和现代组学方法允许在药用植物中发现编码生物合成途径的各种基因。重组 DNA 技术能够将这些基因和调控元件引入宿主生物体，并增强相应次级代谢物的异源产生。另一方面，植物中外源 DNA 的瞬时表达促进了许多具有药学重要性的蛋白质的产生。这篇综述总结了异源宿主植物代谢途径工程的几个成功案例。同样地，还强调了一些用于治疗目的的植物中重组蛋白表达的例子。因此，药用植物作为低分子量和高分子量有价值产品的来源的重要性已大大增加。生物工程的下一步是在微生物系统中实现植物次生代谢物工业规模生产的更多成功案例，并充分利用植物细胞工厂重组蛋白的商业潜力。