natural-products-engineering
Natural products engineering is the application of synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, and molecular tools to design, optimize, or reconstruct the biosynthetic pathways plants use to produce specialized metabolites such as alkaloids, terpenoids, and flavonoids. These compounds often have significant pharmaceutical, agricultural, or industrial value, but are produced in small quantities or through complex, poorly understood routes in native plants. By elucidating and reengineering these pathways, researchers can boost yields, create novel compounds, and transfer production into more tractable host organisms, accelerating both basic discovery and practical applications.
PubMed · 2026-02-19
Scientists identified a protein called MED25 that acts as a central hub connecting a plant's stress hormone system to the production of valuable compounds like medicinal alkaloids and colorful flavonoids. Disabling this protein in Madagascar periwinkle reduced the plant's ability to make cancer-drug precursors, revealing MED25 as a conserved regulator of specialized plant chemistry.
Silencing the MED25 gene in Madagascar periwinkle hairy roots significantly reduced accumulation of terpenoid indole alkaloids, which are precursors to anticancer drugs like vincristine and vinblastine.
MED25 physically binds to multiple transcription factor proteins — including MYC2 and JAZ1 in periwinkle, and GL3, MYB12, and MYB111 in Arabidopsis — acting as a molecular bridge between jasmonate stress signaling and compound production.
The regulatory role of MED25 is conserved across evolutionarily distant plant species: both Madagascar periwinkle and Arabidopsis showed suppressed flavonoid pathway gene expression when MED25 was lost or silenced.
