Program Duration: July 11 to August 23, 2019(6 Weeks)

Instructor: Prof. Kexuan Tang

Location: Agriculture and biology School, 1-402

Weekly meeting time:

Journal club: 2 h

Seminar: 2 h

Working report: 2 h

Contact:

Prof Kexuan Tang

Tel: 86-21-34206916, Fax: 86-21-34206916

Email: kxtang@sjtu.edu.cn or kxtang1@163.com

Qifang Pan

Tel：86-15201810689

Email：panqf@sjtu.edu.cn .

Grade Distribution:

• Attendance 30%
• Mid term presentation 30%
• Final written report 40%

Background Information (Description and Objectives):

       China has a great resource of medicinal plants. Our project mainly focuses on metabolic regulation and engineering of medicinal plants, such as Artemisia annua and Catharanthus roseus. Among them A. annua has obtained great attention due to the antimalarial agents artemisin and its derivatives. Malaria is one of the most serious health problems in human history, which is responsible for more than 600,000 deaths last year. Artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) are recommended by WHO to be the best choice for acute malaria. It has saved millions of lives in Africa countries. The Chinese pharmacologist Youyou Tu received the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her contribution to the artemisinin isolation. Moreover, artemisinin and its derivatives have been found to have antiviral, anticancer, and antischistosomal activities, which makes artemisinin a promising natural product with multifunction. Plant of A. annua is the main commercial source of artemisinin. However, the supply is restricted by the low amounts of artemisinin at a range of 0.1%-1 % dry leaf weight of A. annua, which results in a high cost of this effective product that most of the poor population of malarial victins in Africa could not afford.

In order to improve the artemisinin content in A. annua for reducing its production cost, our project focuses on metabolic engineering of A. annua plants by three main strategies: overexpressing artemisinin biosynthetic pathway key enzyme genes in A. annua, blocking artemisinin biosynthesis competitive pathway key enzyme genes, transcriptional regulation of artemisinin biosynthesis.

Suggested Reference Readings:

1. Yan, T., Chen, M., Shen, Q., Li, L., Fu, X., Pan, Q., Tang, Y., Shi, P., Lv, Z., Jiang, W., Ma, Y., Hao, X., Sun, X. and Tang, K. (2017). HOMEODOMAIN PROTEIN 1 is required for jasmonate-mediated glandular trichome initiation in Artemisia annua. New Phytologist 213: 1145–1155
2. Tang, K., Shen, Q., Lu X. and Zhang, F. (2016). Improving artemisinin content in Artemisia annua by transcription factor regulation. Science (supplement): 48-51.
3. Qian Shen, Lida Zhang , Zhihua Liao, Shengyue Wang, Tingxiang Yan, Pu Shi, Meng Liu, Xueqing Fu, Qifang Pan, Yuliang Wang, Zongyou Lv, Xu Lu, Fangyuan Zhang, Weimin Jiang, Yanan Ma, Minghui Chen, Xiaolong Hao, Ling Li, Yueli Tang, Gang Lv, Yan Zhou, Xiaofen Sun, Peter E. Brodelius, Jocelyn K.C. Rose and Kexuan Tang. (2018). The Genome of Artemisia annua Provides Insight into the Evolution of Asteraceae Family and Artemisinin Biosynthesis. Molecular Plant 11, 776–788

Important Note: