Plants produce more than 30,000 types of chemicals, including pharmaceuticals, pigments and other fine chemicals, which is four times more than those obtain ed from microbes. Plant cell culture has been receiving great attention as an alternative for the production of valuable plant derived secondary metabolites, since it has many advantages over whole plant cultivation. However, much more research is required to enhance the culture productivity and reduce the pro cessing costs, which is the key to the commercialization of plant cell culture pro cesses. The recent achievements in related biochemical engineering studies are reviewed in Chapter 1. The effect of gaseous compounds on plant cell behavior has been little studied, and Chapter 2 focuses on these gas concentration effects (including oxygen, carbon dioxide, ethylene and others, such as volatile hor mones like methyl jasmonate) on secondary metabolite production by plant cell cultures. Two metabolites of current interest, i. e. , the antimalarial artemisinin (known as "qing hao su" in China) that is produced by Artemisia annua (sweet wormwood) and taxanes used for anticancer therapy that are produced by species of Taxus, are taken as examples. Bioprocess integration is another hot topic in plant cell culture technology. Because most of the plant secondary meta bolites are toxic to the cells at high concentrations during the culture, removal of the product in situ during the culture can lead to the enhanced productivity. Various integrated bioprocessing techniques are discussed in Chapter 3.

This review series covers trends in modern biology All aspects of this interdisciplinary technology, where knowledge, methods and expertise are required from chemistry, biochemistry, microbiology, genetics, chemical engineering and computer science, are treated Electronic version available at: http://link.springer.de/series/abe/

Klappentext

The recent achievements in engineering studies on plant cell cultures are reviewed, included are the gas concentration effects and bioprocess integration for the enhanced productivity of plant secondary metabolites. The metabolic engineering of plant secondary metabolite pathways and recombinant protein production from genetically modified plant cells are introduced. Large-scale plant micropropagation via somatic embryogenesis and hairy roots is discussed for efficient propagation of desease-free, genetically uniform and massive amounts of plants in vitro in massive amounts. Characterization and application of hairy plant roots endowed with photosynthetic functions is also covered in this special volume.

Inhalt
Biochemical Engineering of the Production of Plant-Specific Secondary Metabolites by Cell Suspension Cultures.- Gas Concentration Effects on Secondary Metabolite Production by Plant Cell Cultures.- Integrated Bioprocessing for Plant Cell Cultures.- Genetic Modification of Plant Secondary Metabolite Pathways Using Transcriptional Regulators.- The Production of Foreign Proteins from Genetically Modified Plant Cells.- Large-Scale Plant Micropropagation.- Characterization and Application of Plant Hairy Roots Endowed with Photosynthetic Functions.