ALKALOID DRUGS PRODUCTION BY METABOLIC ENGINEERING OF MICROBES AND THEIR MEDICAL APPLICATIONS: A REWIEW
Tahira Mohsin, Sikander Ali*, Ammara Nasir and Sadia Sanawer
ABSTRACT
Alkaloids based pharmaceutical products are mainly produced by some plants species and further proceeds to fermentation in bioreactors while due to some limitations; it’s not a well defined way for alkaloids production. The most important alkaloids are benzylisoquinoline alkaloids, ergot alkaloids, quinoline alkaloids, monoterpene indole alkaloids, tetrahydroisoquinoline alkaloids, phenylethylisoquinoline alkaloids, phenylethylamines alkaloids and pyrroloquinoline alkaloids. While endophytic fungi in plants are also good sources of alkaloids drugs, which showed excellent biological and medical properties including anticancer, insecticidal, cytotoxic and antimicrobial activities. Now days, plant pathways, in order to generate alkaloid-derived pharmaceutical products, are introduced into microbes. Many genes coding for specific enzymes, involved in biosynthesis of alkaloids, are sequenced and introduce into microbes by recombinant DNA technology. In this review, we examine main sources of alkaloids based drugs and advance methods for their better production. Furthermore, we investigate challenges, which cause hindrance in microbial production of alkaloids-derived drugs that must be defeated.
Keywords: Alkaloids, Endophytic fungi, Biosynthesis, Microbial production, Biological properties.
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