Genetics of flavonoids

Abstract

Flavonoids are structurally diverse plant pigments that comprise the largest group of natural products and are ubiquitously present in the plant kingdom. They exhibit a broad range of functions in plants. Interestingly, these polyphenolic compounds have also shown beneficial health effects in humans by inhibiting or delaying the onset of diseases. Though the biosynthetic pathway of flavonoids in plants is well known, many studies have explored the significance of the flavonoids. In the last 10 years, flavonoids have been produced in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Escherichia coli, and Streptomyces species by heterologously expressing partial or entire plant flavonoids biosynthetic gene clusters and rewiring the native host metabolic networks. Currently, a few natural and novel flavonoids have been produced in significant amounts in microbial systems. However, the development of a microbial factory for the efficient biosynthesis of diverse flavonoids remains incomplete. The integrated use of modern metabolic engineering, proteomics, and synthetic biology tools could aid the design of robust microbial cells for the production and biotransformation of flavonoids in the near future. In this chapter, we will discuss recent progress in the production and biotransformation of flavonoids from engineered microbial cells, transgenic plants, and whole cells of plants and Streptomyces.