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Title:
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Travel advice on the road to carotenoids in plants
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Author:
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Farré Martinez, Gemma; Sanahuja Solsona, Georgina; Naqvi, Shaista; Bai, Chao; Capell Capell, Teresa; Zhu, Changfu; Christou, Paul
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Notes:
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The carotenoids are a major class of organic pigments produced in plants and microbes. They fulfill many
essential physiological and developmental processes in plants, and also have important roles in animal
health and nutrition. As such they have been the focus of multidisciplinary research programs aiming
to understand how they are synthesized in microbes and plants, and to clone genes encoding the corresponding
enzymes and express them to modulate carotenoid production in recombinant microbial and
plant systems. Our deeper understanding of carotenogenic gene regulation, in concert with the development
of more effective multi-gene transfer systems for plants, has facilitated more ambitious strategies
for the modulation of plant carotenoid biosynthesis not only in laboratory models but more importantly
in staple food crops. Here we review the genetic and molecular tools and resources available for fundamental
and applied carotenoid research, emphasizing recent achievements in carotenoid engineering
and potential future objectives for carotenoid research in plants.
This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Innovation, Spain (BFU2007-61413 and BIO2007-30738-E) European Research Council Advanced Grant (BIOFORCE) to PC and Associated Unit CAVA. SN and GF were supported by Ministry of Science and Innovation, PhD fellowships. |
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Subject(s):
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-secondary metabolites
-Metabolic engineering
-Plant transformation
-Biosynthetic pathways |
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Rights:
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(c) Elsevier, 2010
info:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccess |
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Document type:
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article
publishedVersion |
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Published by:
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Elsevier
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