Plant Secondary Metabolic Engineering

 Metabolic Engineering is a new approach to understanding and using metabolic processes. As the name implies, ME is the targeted and purposeful alteration of metabolic pathways found in an organism in order to better understand and use cellular pathways for chemical transformation, energy transudation, and supramolecular assembly. Knowledge acquired from this research will benefit society in a number of ways, including the ability to modify biological pathways to produce biological substitutes for less desirable chemical processes; allowing greater agricultural production, permitting more efficient and safer energy production, and; providing better understanding of the metabolic basis for some medical conditions that could assist in the development of new cures.

 Plants are a valuable source of a wide range of secondary metabolites which are used as pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, flavours, fragrances, colours, biopesticides and food additives. There are a number of plant cell cultures producing a higher amount of secondary metabolites than in intact plants. However, there are still problems in the production of metabolites by cell cultures resulting from the instability of cell lines, low yields, slow growth and scale-up problem. 

Our research will be focused on plant metabolic engineering studies to overcome the low yield issue of useful phytochemical compounds as reflected by our team name and logo. Our research field includes plant cell/organ culture, metabolic engineering, functional genomics of plant cell, production of useful secondary metabolites, and metabolic flux analysis (MFA).We always welcome young engineers with great eagerness and ambition to join our team!!