Abstract

Background: Enzymes are biocatalysts that play key roles in the production of biomolecules. Transgenic plants can be valuable cost effective resource to produce enzymes with bona fide structure. Further, plants provide inexpensive production platforms for pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals.

Objective: This review article summarizes the properties and importance of enzymes and describes how foreign proteins/enzymes accumulate in plant cells that can be used for commercial purposes.

Conclusion: The instances illustrated in this review evidently depict that plant enzymes involved in fundamental cellular activities are of great importance regarding plant growth and development. Investigating these enzymes and the metabolic pathways involved in their synthesis will certainly help to improve plant and human health. Furthermore, enzymes of industrial and pharmaceutical importance can be expressed in genetically modified plants to obtain enhanced expression. Considering easiness of obtaining desired expression, GM plants can offer a good alternate for large scale production of enzymes.

Keywords: Enzymes, in planta, kinases, hydrogenases, ATPases, cellulases, glucanases, phytases.

Graphical Abstract