Journal of Medicinal Plants Biotechnology

Abstract The increasing tendency of human societies to use herbal medicines has caused an increase in the demand for effective medicinal plants. Despite many advances in the field of artificial synthesis of effective plant substances, extraction from plant sources is still the only way to obtain many valuable medicinal substances. A group of alkaloids are natural drugs that are known as sedatives and painkillers; Like morphine and codeine, which are obtained from poppy, they are the most common painkillers. Currently, the country's annual need for morphine is 30 tons, which will increase with the increase in population. 70% of Iran's needs are supplied by importing concentrated poppy straw (CPS) and 30% from opium sap etc. About 5000 types of alkaloids are known in 15% of plants belonging to 150 plant families, among which tropane alkaloids such as hyoscyamine, atropine and scopolamine are widely used in medicine. One of the main uses of poppy alkaloids in the pharmaceutical industry is They are in painkillers. Today, the industrial production of tropane alkaloids through new techniques such as plant cell and tissue culture, somatic hybridization, metabolic engineering, large-scale cultivation and its commercialization using bioreactors has attracted a lot of attention. This article examines poppy alkaloids and their biosynthetic pathways, which can be useful in clarifying the future direction of research in this field.

Abstract Medicinal plants have been a source of medicinal compounds and other useful products since ancient times. Due to some limitations, the traditional methods of supplying medicinal compounds are not able to meet the ever-increasing needs of the market, and therefore the use of alternative methods is inevitable. Metabolic engineering is a logical and efficient solution to increase the production of medicinal compounds and reduce related costs. In addition to improving the production of desired metabolites and reducing the production of unwanted metabolites, metabolic engineering also leads to the production of new metabolites in plants. Currently, many methods are used to manipulate metabolic pathways, among which CRISPR/Cas technology has a special place due to its high accuracy and ease of use. In this article, the importance of medicinal plants and their metabolites has been discussed first, and then the necessity of using metabolic engineering to increase the medicinal compounds of these plants has been pointed out. In the following, we have explained the CRISPR/Cas technology and how it works in gene editing. Then, the application of this technology in manipulating the metabolic pathways of medicinal plants is discussed, focusing on three major groups of plant metabolites, namely terpenoids, alkaloids and phenylpropanoids. The next section deals with some of the challenges in the application of this technology in the metabolic engineering of medicinal plants, and proposed solutions. At the end, the future prospects of using this technology in metabolic improvements of medicinal plants are briefly described.