Advanced applications of synthetic biology technology in biosynthesis of bioactive compounds from medicinal plants

Medicinal plants serve as valuable sources of bioactive compounds with critical applications across pharmaceutical, agricultural, and industrial sectors. Compared to chemical synthesis and plant extraction, synthetic biology offers a green, efficient, and sustainable alternative for producing bioactive compounds, which represents a state of art technology. However, this technology still faces several challenges, including overly long metabolic pathways, inadequate catalytic efficiency of key enzymes in the pathway, and incompatibility between gene elements and host cells, leading to low yields of target bioactive compounds. The development and application of regulatory tools in synthetic biology hold great promise for overcoming these obstacles. This review first summarizes the classification and biosynthesis of bioactive compounds based on structural types. Subsequently, recent advancements are outlined in regulation tools and their application in the heterologous production of bioactive compounds. This review aims to establish a foundation for the efficient production of bioactive compounds based on microbial cell factories. This not only has significant practical implications for reducing the resource consumption and environmental impact of traditional production methods, but also highlights the central role of synthetic biology in promoting the sustainable production of bioactive compounds derived from medicinal plants.