Chemicals via Higher Plant Bioengineering (Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology Book 464)

Food and raw material for its production was generally produced via the traditional agriculture. On the other hand, novel chemicals were manufactured in the laboratory or extracted from plant and animal sources. However, as the world population is steadily in­ creasing, there is a decrease in traditional agriculture productivity and concerns are also expressed over the damage inflicted to the environment and restrictions that might be en­ forced in food production. At the same time, there is an increasing demand for high qual­ ity agricultural products as well as for food ingredients related to both the traditional or newly discovered nutrients or phytochemicals. Trends and developments,~n the area of plant biotechnology and bioengineering has allowed manipulation of genes' !lnd/or insertion of new genes, thus production of trans­ genic plants. Starting from the introduction of agronomic traits, particularly stress resis­ tance to diverse environmental factors, process and sensory characteristics, food quality and production of novel varieties of plant-based products through genetic engineering, biotechnology is changing the,;agriculture and the concept of production of plant-ba~~d raw materials. Increasing attention is being paid on research for production of plants !pat can provide a wide array of food and non-food products. Perhaps the first non-food pro,d­ uct that plant biotechnology would achieve is production of large scale custom-designed industrial oils, but the list of chemicals is long, ranging" from oils and specific triacyl­ glycerols to biopolymers, enzymes, blood components, amo~g others. Front Matter....Pages i-viii Novel Chemicals from Plants via Bioengineering....Pages 1-4 Recent Progress in Agricultural Biotechnology and Opportunities for Contract Research and Development....Pages 5-20 Manipulation of Plant Oil Composition for the Production of Valuable Chemicals....Pages 21-35 Biosynthesis of Ricinoleate in Castor Oil....Pages 37-47 Monoterpenes in Essential Oils....Pages 49-62 Biochemical and Molecular Tools for the Production of Useful Terpene Products from Pepper ( Capsicum Annuum )....Pages 63-76 Towards the Production of Salt-Tolerant Crops....Pages 77-89 Combinatorial Chemistry and its Applications in Agriculture and Food....Pages 91-105 Biological Nitrogen Fixation and Future Challenges of Agriculture....Pages 107-115 Molecular Strategies to Improve The Nutritional Quality of Legume Proteins....Pages 117-126 Molecular Farming of Industrial Proteins from Transgenic Maize....Pages 127-147 Improvements in Human Health Through Production of Human Milk Proteins in Transgenic Food Plants....Pages 149-159 Food Plant-Delivered Cholera Toxin B Subunit for Vaccination and Immunotolerization....Pages 161-178 Autoantigens Produced in Plants for Oral Tolerance Therapy of Autoimmune Diseases....Pages 179-194 Production of Food Related Colorants by Culture of Plant Cells....Pages 195-210 Production of Recombinant Blood Factors in Transgenic Plants....Pages 211-220 Recent Progress in Biotechnology of Mexican Medicinal Plants....Pages 221-233 Chemicals from Roots, Hairy Roots, and Their Application....Pages 235-275 Back Matter....Pages 277-280 Topics in this groundbreaking proceedings include: the manipulation of genes in plants in order to produce needed food-related compounds, novel vaccines and therapeutic reagents, better overall fruits and vegetables, improved nutritional quality, and prevention of problems affecting the quality of plant foods. General strategies are presented on how to efficiently approach the bioengineering of a plant for better properties by creating arsenals of various cloned genes for enzymes from plant algae, fungal, and bacterial sources.

Disc. transgenic plants: plant- based products, incl. food, industrial oils, biopolymers.