Life Sciences & Biotechnology
Title : | Rational Metabolic engineering strategies for enhanced production of camptothecin in Nothapodytes nimmoniana plant cells |
Area of research : | Life Sciences & Biotechnology |
Principal Investigator : | Prof. Smita Srivastava, Indian Institute Of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) Chennai, Tamil Nadu |
Timeline Start Year : | 2022 |
Timeline End Year : | 2025 |
Contact info : | smita@iitm.ac.in |
Equipments : | HPLC |
Details
Executive Summary : | Over the past few decades, natural plant products, specifically secondary metabolites have increasingly been under the limelight for a plethora of applications ranging from cosmetics to the treatment of life-threatening diseases. Camptothecin (CPT), a monoterpene indole alkaloid is the third most sought-after drug used in anti-cancer therapeutics. The primary natural source of CPT is from the plants, Camptotheca acuminata and Nothapodytes nimmoniana (native to South-east Asia). Utilization of natural plants as a source for pharmaceutical products has been an arduous task due to widely varying seasonal and soil conditions, extensive deforestation and habitat loss rendering these plants in the endangered species category. However, to meet the increasing market demand, plant cell/tissue culture can be used for micro-propagation of high-yielding plants, germplasm conservation and also as sustainable sources for in vitro production of CPT at large scale.(Murali et al. 2021). In order to achieve this, understanding the complex metabolic networks of plants to produce secondary metabolites like CPT can be accomplished by the construction of comprehensive metabolic models to determine plant phenotypes and predict plant metabolic behaviour, facilitating the selection of suitable strategies, saving time and cost over a traditional hit-trial approach in experimentation. Hence, our project is proposed to reconstruct a genome-scale metabolic model using constraint-based modelling methods to identify targets for gene-overexpression and experimentally validate them using metabolic engineering strategies for enhanced CPT production in the cell lines of N. nimmoniana. |
Total Budget (INR): | 53,13,000 |
Patents : | 2 |
Organizations involved