Production of plant secondary metabolites without plants: a perspective

Efforts to commercially exploit native plant secondary metabolite production patterns in cell culture systems have been largely thwarted by the repression of secondary metabolism under growth-oriented culture conditions. Where expression can be obtained by selection or elicitation, the difficulties of large scale cultivation/processing still make the cost effectiveness of cell culture systems dubious except where a very high value market niche can be identified. The long range prospect for efficiently utilizing the catalytic genius of higher plants resides in the transfer of appropriate genetic information to microbial systems for whom the fermentation expertise and industrial facilities already exist.