TY - JOUR
T1 - The carotenoid biosynthetic pathway
T2 - Thinking in all dimensions
AU - Shumskaya, Maria
AU - Wurtzel, Eleanore T.
PY - 2013/7
Y1 - 2013/7
N2 - The carotenoid biosynthetic pathway serves manifold roles in plants related to photosynthesis, photoprotection, development, stress hormones, and various volatiles and signaling apocarotenoids. The pathway also produces compounds that impact human nutrition and metabolic products that contribute to fragrance and flavor of food and non-food crops. It is no surprise that the pathway has been a target of metabolic engineering, most prominently in the case of Golden Rice. The future success and predictability of metabolic engineering of carotenoids rests in the ability to target carotenoids for specific physiological purposes as well as to simultaneously modify carotenoids along with other desired traits. Here, we ask whether predictive metabolic engineering of the carotenoid pathway is indeed possible. Despite a long history of research on the pathway, at this point in time we can only describe the pathway as a parts list and have almost no knowledge of the location of the complete pathway, how it is assembled, and whether there exists any trafficking of the enzymes or the carotenoids themselves. We discuss the current state of knowledge regarding the "complete" pathway and make the argument that predictive metabolic engineering of the carotenoid pathway (and other pathways) will require investigation of the three dimensional state of the pathway as it may exist in plastids of different ultrastructures. Along with this message we point out the need to develop new types of visualization tools and resources that better reflect the dynamic nature of biosynthetic pathways.
AB - The carotenoid biosynthetic pathway serves manifold roles in plants related to photosynthesis, photoprotection, development, stress hormones, and various volatiles and signaling apocarotenoids. The pathway also produces compounds that impact human nutrition and metabolic products that contribute to fragrance and flavor of food and non-food crops. It is no surprise that the pathway has been a target of metabolic engineering, most prominently in the case of Golden Rice. The future success and predictability of metabolic engineering of carotenoids rests in the ability to target carotenoids for specific physiological purposes as well as to simultaneously modify carotenoids along with other desired traits. Here, we ask whether predictive metabolic engineering of the carotenoid pathway is indeed possible. Despite a long history of research on the pathway, at this point in time we can only describe the pathway as a parts list and have almost no knowledge of the location of the complete pathway, how it is assembled, and whether there exists any trafficking of the enzymes or the carotenoids themselves. We discuss the current state of knowledge regarding the "complete" pathway and make the argument that predictive metabolic engineering of the carotenoid pathway (and other pathways) will require investigation of the three dimensional state of the pathway as it may exist in plastids of different ultrastructures. Along with this message we point out the need to develop new types of visualization tools and resources that better reflect the dynamic nature of biosynthetic pathways.
KW - Biosynthetic pathways
KW - Carotenoid biosynthesis
KW - Metabolic engineering
KW - Plant biochemistry
KW - Plants
KW - Plastids
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84877071044&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.plantsci.2013.03.012
DO - 10.1016/j.plantsci.2013.03.012
M3 - Review article
C2 - 23683930
AN - SCOPUS:84877071044
SN - 0168-9452
VL - 208
SP - 58
EP - 63
JO - Plant Science
JF - Plant Science
ER -