A polyhedral approach for understanding flavonoid biosynthesis in Arabidopsis

The sequencing of the entire genome of model plants has made it possible to use these plants for producing metabolites that are beneficial to humans. Plants produce a large number of metabolites, which are potentially valuable sources of novel pharmaceutically active agents that benefit human health. The industrial use of these beneficial metabolites from plants, known as secondary metabolites or specialized metabolites, necessitates the systematic understanding of the biosynthetic mechanisms from the genetic to the metabolic level. Here, we review the recent developments on flavonoid biosynthesis in Arabidopsis thaliana (Arabidopsis) as a model plant. These developments have been made in the fields of metabolomics, transcriptomics, natural products chemistry, genetics and biochemistry. We focused on natural products chemistry in this polyhedral approach, which proved to be indispensable for elucidating the secondary metabolism in not only Arabidopsis but also other model-like and crop plants.