Biosynthesis of Natural Products in Plants: Bioengineering in Post-genomics Era

This book discusses the importance of plants in terms of their natural bioactive products and medicinal, nutraceutical and health benefits. Plants are natural sources of many pharmaceutical compounds used in traditional and modern medicine, and their mass production and efficient use is imperative in view of the new emerging diseases. This book covers breakthroughs in the research of plant natural products by focusing on how different state-of-the-art biotechnologies facilitate their discovery, the molecular basis of their biosynthesis, as well as synthetic biology. Research on plant's natural products in the pre-genomic era was focused on discovering bioactive molecules with pharmaceutical activities, and identifying individual genes responsible for biosynthesis. In the post-genomics era, however, integration of inter-disciplinary approaches and detailed analysis of all accessible data from multi-informatics is necessary. This would accelerate the full characterization of biosynthetic and regulatory circuit for producing plant natural products.

This book is an important reference book for the researchers working in the field of plant natural products and pharmaceutical industries at global level.

Dr. Nitish Kumar is a Senior Assistant Professor at the Department of Biotechnology, Central University of South Bihar, Bihar, India. Dr. Kumar completed his doctoral research at the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research–Central Salt & Marine Chemicals Research Institute, Bhavnagar, Gujarat, India. He has a wide area of research experience in the field of agriculture and medicinal plants improvement and possesses a strong publication record. Dr. Kumar is a recipient of the Young Scientist Award from the Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB) in 2014. He has also received many awards/fellowships/projects from various prestigious government organizations like CSIR, DBT, ICAR and SERB-DST, BRNS-BARC, among others.