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Hairy Root and Its Application in Plant Genetic Engineering
Author(s) -
Hu ZhiBi,
Du Min
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
journal of integrative plant biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.734
H-Index - 83
eISSN - 1744-7909
pISSN - 1672-9072
DOI - 10.1111/j.1744-7909.2006.00121.x
Subject(s) - agrobacterium , hairy root culture , biology , gene engineering , transgene , gene , botany , genetically modified crops , plasmid , plant cell , metabolic engineering , root (linguistics) , computational biology , microbiology and biotechnology , genetics , recombinant dna , linguistics , philosophy
Agrobacterium rhizogenes Conn. causes hairy root disease in plants. Hairy root‐infected A. rhizogenes is characterized by a high growth rate and genetic stability. Hairy root cultures have been proven to be an efficient means of producing secondary metabolites that are normally biosynthesized in roots of differentiated plants. Furthermore, a transgenic root system offers tremendous potential for introducing additional genes along with the Ri plasmid, especially with modified genes, into medicinal plant cells with A. rhizogenes vector systems. The cultures have turned out to be a valuable tool with which to study the biochemical properties and the gene expression profile of metabolic pathways. Moreover, the cultures can be used to elucidate the intermediates and key enzymes involved in the biosynthesis of secondary metabolites. The present article discusses various applications of hairy root cultures in plant genetic engineering and potential problems associated with them. (Managing editor: Wei Wang)