title: Plant carotenoids: genomics meets multi-gene engineering.
abstract: Carotenoids are present in plant photosynthetic tissues, where they have essential roles in photoreception and photoprotection, as well as in non-photosynthetic tissues, where they act as colorants, precursors for plant isoprenoid volatiles and signaling molecules (abscisic acid and strigolactones), nutritional antioxidants and vitamin A precursors. This review presents the recent advances in our understanding of their biosynthesis, the key metabolic steps controlling their accumulation in plant non-photosynthetic tissues and their metabolic engineering using multi-gene approaches.
authors.affiliation: Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Development (ENEA), Casaccia Research Center, Via Anguillarese 301, Roma 00123, Italy. Electronic address: giovanni.giuliano@enea.it.
authors.forename: Giovanni
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Giuliano
mesh_terms: D002338:Carotenoids / Q000378:metabolism*; D005818:Genetic Engineering; D018745:Genome, Plant; D010944:Plants / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D002338:Carotenoids