The plant production systems

Plants synthesize a wide range of bioactive small molecules during adaptive responses to environmental challenges.  Whilst the chemical diversity of these molecules is considerable, the level of production in the plant is typically low and purification for industrial application is rarely cost-effective.  Glycosylation of small molecules is a typical modification in plants, when the glycosides but not the aglycones are stored in the vacuole of the cell. 

Glytech has established that enhanced glycosylation of defined small molecules increases their yield in the plant.  Thus, the overexpression of a GT recognising a specific aglycone can lead to an increased production of the corresponding glycoside.  The glycoside can be readily converted post-harvest back to the aglycone.  This strategy also has immense utility in increasing the yield of volatile small molecules such as terpenoids that would be lost from the plant if they were not stabilised as non-volatile glycosides.  In other applications, prevention of glycosylation may be more relevant and the availability of the GT library provides the tools to achieve this.