Recent advances in medicinal plant biotechnology

Medicinal plants are the most important source of life saving drugs for the majority of the world's population. Plant secondary metabolites are economically important as drugs, fragrances, pigments, food additives and pesticides. The biotechnological tools are important to select, multiply, improve and analyze medicinal plants. In-vitro production of secondary metabolites in plant cell suspension cultures has been reported from various medicinal plants and bioreactors are the key step towards commercial production of secondary metabolites by plant biotechnology. Genetic transformation is a powerful tool for enhancing the productivity of novel secondary metabolites; especially by Agrobacterium tumefacians . Combinatorial biosynthesis is another approach in the generation of novel natural products and for the production of rare and expensive natural products. DNA profiling techniques like DNA microarrays serve as suitable high throughput tools for the simultaneous analysis of multiple genes and analysis of gene expression that becomes necessary for providing clues about regulatory mechanism, biochemical pathways and broader cellular functions.