Plants offer a vast source of natural bioactive compounds with the potential to improve human health through the prevention and/or treatment of disease. Further, many secondary metabolites have bioactivities that are exploited in a wide variety of applications ranging from medicinal, cosmeceutical, and nutraceutical interests. Some secondary metabolites are also exploited for large-scale production due to demand and their economic feasibility. Compared with agronomic practices and conventional plant breeding, plant metabolic engineering, and synthetic biology strategies are more effective in synthesizing specific micronutrients, phytonutrients, and/or bioactive components in crops. Advances and innovations in plant synthetic metabolic engineering facilitate the development of nutrient-enriched crops to meet the nutritional needs of humans. On the other hand, plants are also becoming an emerging alternative for the production of recombinant biopharmaceuticals. The use of plant expression systems for biopharmaceutical production has several advantages which were reviewed by several groups in recent decades. Given the relevance of plant research in addressing food security and affordable biopharmaceutical production, it seems appropriate to assess the current state of research knowledge on this particular topic.

The aim of this Research Topic is to provide recent advances in the field of plant research and its prospects in promoting human health, nutrition, and biopharmaceutical development. Additionally, this Research Topic should facilitate the cooperation of researchers from the plant science community to exchange knowledge with the common goal to depict the feasibility of utilizing plants for biotechnological and biomedical purposes for a healthy and sustainable future.

We welcome research articles, review articles, research reports, opinions, and perspectives that address this mission. We encourage scientific contributions from both academia and industry. Manuscripts should address, but not be restricted to, the following topics:

• Metabolic engineering of the biosynthetic pathways
• Biofortification of Essential Vitamins and Micronutrients
• Nutraceuticals and Disease Prevention
• Next-Generation Metabolic Engineering in Plants
• Genome editing for improving crop nutrition
• Integration of omics technologies for metabolite synthesis
• Opportunities and obstacles in using plants as a production platform
• Biologically active recombinant vaccine, biologics, or therapeutic protein production
• Strategies to improve the yield of recombinant protein production
• Glycoengineering in plants

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Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology

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