About this Research Topic
Hairy root cultures (HRCs) are established from the deliberate infection of R. rhizogenes in several plant species. HRCs are an exciting in-vitro system with several applications from specialized metabolite production to foreign protein production. Being genetically and biochemically stable, it provides long-term production stability. Its low-cost cultural requirement, profuse growth potential, and relatively short doubling time form the basis to make its application commercially viable. Furthermore, the regeneration potential of HRCs also provides an alternative way leading to transgenic system. The HRCs based production system has already been undertaken in industrial-scale production. Recently, with the advent of several gene engineering approaches the HRCs have provided a practical solution to understanding the function of genes in native genomic background, which otherwise appears tedious, and requires relatively high time and effort.
The goal of this research topic is to include the diverse applications of transgenic hairy roots in human welfare. The HRCs have a significant reputation to characterise the genes related to diverse aspects of plant biology, but not limited to specialised metabolism, plant-microbe interaction, and nodulation biology. In the last two decades studies related to the development of transgenic hairy roots have escalated, yet have not received much focus on relevant compilation. Hence, the proposed research topic will focus on significant studies which include transgenic hairy roots as a model system to understand several key questions to understand plant biology and specialised metabolism.
‘Metabolic engineering in hairy roots’ will cover different aspects of hairy root biotechnology and have a focus on the overexpression of plant specialised (PSM) pathway genes or regulatory transcription factors, gene silencing, and editing of genes associated with competitive pathways. The research topic will also cover the production of PSM in hairy roots of model plants as well as therapeutic protein production (molecular farming), biotransformation, and phytoremediation studies in transgenic hairy roots. Further, the method development for transgenic hairy roots using reporter genes will also be considered. The issue will accept original research and review articles related to the theme of the research topic.
The goal of this research topic is to include the diverse applications of transgenic hairy roots in human welfare. The HRCs have a significant reputation to characterise the genes related to diverse aspects of plant biology, but not limited to specialised metabolism, plant-microbe interaction, and nodulation biology. In the last two decades studies related to the development of transgenic hairy roots have escalated, yet have not received much focus on relevant compilation. Hence, the proposed research topic will focus on significant studies which include transgenic hairy roots as a model system to understand several key questions to understand plant biology and specialised metabolism.
‘Metabolic engineering in hairy roots’ will cover different aspects of hairy root biotechnology and have a focus on the overexpression of plant specialised (PSM) pathway genes or regulatory transcription factors, gene silencing, and editing of genes associated with competitive pathways. The research topic will also cover the production of PSM in hairy roots of model plants as well as therapeutic protein production (molecular farming), biotransformation, and phytoremediation studies in transgenic hairy roots. Further, the method development for transgenic hairy roots using reporter genes will also be considered. The issue will accept original research and review articles related to the theme of the research topic.
Keywords: Hairy Roots, Transgenic, Gene silencing, Gene editing, Overexpression, Foreign protein production, Secondary Metabolism
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