Newswise — Lonicera has about 200 species of plants, which have extensive economic benefits and can be used as medicinal materials, food, cosmetics and ornamental plants, etc. As traditional medicinal plants in China, they are used to treat heat related diseases, viral respiratory infections, skin diseases and inflammations. Their bioactive components mainly include chlorogenic acids, flavonoids, iridoids, and triterpene saponins.
Due to the huge demand for Lonicera spp. and the trend of overexploitation of wild resources of Lonicera spp. there is a need for alternative and effective strategies such as metabolic engineering and green production to meet the demand.
This article provides a comprehensive review of the research progress on the biosynthesis, metabolic engineering structure and pharmacology of the main bioactive components in Lonicera genus. The artical reviews the biosynthesis and metabolic engineering of chlorogenic acid, luteolin, deoxygenated quercetin, and ivy saponin, summarises the pharmacological research progress of Lonicera plants, and construct a phylogenetic relationship of Lonicera species based on the chloroplast whole genome. In this paper, the biosynthetic pathways and metabolic engineering of the four compounds were firstly systematically reviewed, providing theoretical references for further improvement of the synthetic biology of the related components (Figure 1).
Existing research results indicate that Lonicera plants have a wide range of phar.
