Plant cell cultures: A potential in food and bio‐technology

Plant cell suspension cultures can now be established from virtually any higher plant. Some cultures are spontaneously able to produce large quantities of natural products, while in other cases high yielding strains can be selected out of populations of non‐producing strains. Cells can also be induced to form low molecular weight compounds by transfer into specific production media. Unfortunately, there is a large number of cell cultures which currently can under no circumstances produce these metabolites. This applies specifically to terpenoid compounds which are formed in trichomes. The complete biosynthetic chains for the formation of certain natural products have been clarified at the enzyme level. The underlying plant genes coding for these enzymes can be expressed in microorganisms which than would serve as a source for these biocatalysts. In addition, these genes can be analyzed to hopefully elucidate the regulatory mechanisms of producing and non‐producing plant cell cultures.