Plant natural products (NPs) not only serve many functions in an organism's survivability but also demonstrate important pharmacological activities. Isolation of NPs from native sources is frequently limited by low abundance and environmental, seasonal, and regional variation while total chemical synthesis of what are often complex structures is typically commercially infeasible. Reconstruction of biosynthetic pathways in heterologous microorganisms offers significant promise for a scalable means to provide sufficient quantities of a desired NP while using inexpensive renewable resources. To this end, metabolic engineering provides the technological platform for enhancing NP production in these engineered heterologous hosts. Recent advancements in the production of isoprenoids, phenylpropanoids, and alkaloids were made possible by utilizing a variety of techniques including combinatorial biosynthesis, codon optimization, expression of regulatory elements, and protein engineering of P450s.
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