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Updated: Aug 16, 2025

Annotation of Plant Gene Function via Combined Genomics, Metabolomics and Informatics
Published on: June 17, 2012
Emerging mechanistic insights into the regulation of specialized metabolism in plants
Louis-Valentin Méteignier1, Hans-Wilhelm Nützmann2, Nicolas Papon3
1EA2106 Biomolécules et Biotechnologies Végétales, Université de Tours, Tours, France.
Abstract:
Plants biosynthesize a broad range of natural products through specialized and species-specific metabolic pathways that are fuelled by core metabolism, together forming a metabolic network. Specialized metabolites have important roles in development and adaptation to external cues, and they also have invaluable pharmacological properties. A growing body of evidence has highlighted the impact of translational, transcriptional, epigenetic and chromatin-based regulation and evolution of specialized metabolism genes and metabolic networks. Here we review the forefront of this research field and extrapolate to medicinal plants that synthetize rare molecules. We also discuss how this new knowledge could help in improving strategies to produce useful plant-derived pharmaceuticals.
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