ERC Advanced Grant · 2017
Harnessing the Molecules of Medicinal Plants
Plants, as sessile organisms, synthesize complex molecules for defense and signaling. Humans have long exploited the potent medicinal activities of these plant natural products: artemisinin from sweet wormwood is used to cure malaria, vincristine from Madagascar periwinkle is used to treat cancer, and morphine from poppy alleviates pain. Synthetic biology approaches are being used with increasing success to overproduce these expensive molecules, which are often present at low levels in the plant. However, to pursue such approaches effectively, we must fully understand the biosynthetic pathways that generate these molecules. This pathway discovery process has been a major bottleneck in…
From the public funding record at EU CORDIS. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.