Discovery and metabolic engineering of iridoid/secoiridoid and monoterpenoid indole alkaloid biosynthesis

There has been remarkable progress in the discovery of specialized metabolism pathways in the past few years. This has largely been due to the advent of inexpensive high throughput sequencing technologies, improved gene annotation methods and the development of tools for testing candidate genes for their involvement in particular biosynthetic pathways. This review describes the recent discoveries made on new steps in monoterpenoid indole alkaloid (MIA) biosynthesis within Catharanthus roseus. The review also places these discoveries in context of the existing literature on regulation and production of MIAs in whole plants compared to cell and organ cultures.