Abstract:
A wide range of secondary metabolites are produced by living organisms such
as plants, bacteria and fungi as a part of their defense system against herbivores, pests
and pathogens etc. Isoprenoids often called as terpenoids, are the most abundant and
highly diverse family of natural organic compounds. In Plants, they plays a diverse part
in photosynthetic pigments, hormones, electron carrier, structural components of
membrane, as well as an important role in communication and defense. Many
isoprenoids have useful applications in the pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, and chemical
industries. Isoprenoids synthesized in living organisms by Methyl D-Erythritol 4-
Phosphate (MEP) pathway and Mevalonate (MVA) pathway. The recent advancement
in metabolic engineering and synthetic biology techniques have enabled the
engineering of these important isoprenoid biosynthetic pathways in the heterologous
host systems like Escherichia coli and Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Both engineered
systems are induced for large scale production of value added isoprenoids. In this
chapter, the engineering in MEP pathway and MVA pathway for synthesizing isoprene
units (C5) and its poly-isoprene chains for terpenoid productions have been
summarized. This introduction chapter particularly highlighted the efforts taken for the
production of hemiterpenoids (C5), monoterpenoids (C10), and sesquiterpenoids (C15)
by various metabolic engineering techniques in host E. coli and S. cerevisiae over a
decade.
