Plant Tissue Culture in Biotechnology

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Abstract
Plant tissue culture is profitably used in biotechnology today to produce valuable compounds and to rapidly and uniformly propagate economically important plants. The main objective of this review is to outline the advances in the production of medicaments and biochemicals by plant tissue cultures. In relation to this objective, the development of newly advanced techniques such as transformation, cell fusion, biotransformation, bioreactor with immobilized plant cells, and synthetic seeds, is briefly discussed. Recent studies in my laboratory on the bioconversion of 2-phenylpropionic acid (mainly glycosylation) and l-menthol (glycosylation and hydroxylation) by plant suspension cells, and of codeinone (reduction) by the bioreactor with immobilized opium poppy cells, and on the de novo synthesis of stress metabolites in the immobilized licorice cells, are described. The production of Korean ginseng and saponin ginsenosides in Korean ginseng suspension cells, and of Vitamin E in safflower cells are also discussed.