The plant platform for natural products synthesis: Tobacco

The plant platform is purposed to transform crops into the hosts for production of high-value compounds by utilizing various biotechnological tools. In particular, it is expected that converting non-food crops into efficient hosts for biosynthesis of natural products would become a crucial approach to developing the sustainable bioeconomy. With such features as "non-food" status, rich metabolic diversity, and high-yield cultivation capacity, Nicotiana species are widely regarded as the suitable plant platforms for natural products biosynthesis. Thanks to its high suitability, clear genetic background and low-cost utilization, tobacco is gaining more attention as a plant chassis in biomanufacturing. In addition, due to the development of genetic manipulation tools and synthetic biology, the tobacco platforms has been recognized as a promising strategy for yielding natural products. In this paper, we would review the attractive features and applications of tobacco as a plant platform, with particular emphasis on the design of synthetic biology as well as the transformation techniques. Moreover, certain future development trends of tobacco platforms are proposed, including the improvement of tobacco traits, regulation of metabolic pathways, reconstruction of heterologous metabolic routes, and exploration of novel production methods. It is anticipated that more synthetic biology tools, and metabolic engineering strategies will be discovered, implemented and optimized during the establishment of tobacco platforms, thus delivering on more efficient biomanufacturing of various natural products. • Plant platforms aim to use non-food crops for natural products production. • Nicotiana benthamiana is ideal for biosynthesis due to its character dominance. • Tobacco’s genetic clarity and cost-effectiveness boost biosynthesis potential. • Advances in synthetic biology enable natural products production by tobacco.