page_title: Secondary metabolite
section_title: Biotechnological approaches
hierarchical_section_title: Secondary metabolite / Biotechnological approaches
caption_attribution_description: English: In vitro elongation and rooting of Oncidium leucochilum on KC medium (control) and two KC formulations with 2.5% vinasse after six months. Media are free of plant growth regulators.
context_page_description: Secondary metabolites also called Specialized Metabolites, secondary products or Natural Products are organic compounds produced by bacteria, fungi, or plants which are not directly involved in the normal growth, development, or reproduction of the organism. Unlike primary metabolites, absence of secondary metabolites does not result in immediate death, but rather in a long-term impairment of the organism's survivability, fecundity, or aesthetics, or perhaps in no significant change at all. Specific secondary metabolites are often restricted to a narrow set of species within a phylogenetic group. Secondary metabolites often play an important role in plant defense against herbivory and other interspecies defenses. Humans use secondary metabolites as medicines, flavourings, pigments, and recreational drugs.
  The term secondary metabolite was first coined by Albrecht Kossel, a 1910 Nobel Prize laureate for medicine and physiology in 1910. 30 years later a Polish botanist Friedrich Johann Franz Czapek described secondary metabolites as end products of nitrogen metabolism.
context_section_description: Selective breeding was used as one of the first biotechnological techniques used to reduce the unwanted secondary metabolites in food, such as naringin causing bitterness in grapefruit. In some cases increasing the content of secondary metabolites in a plant is the desired outcome. Traditionally this was done using in-vitro plant tissue culture techniques which allow for: control of growth conditions, mitigate seasonality of plants or protect them from parasites and harmful-microbes. Synthesis of secondary metabolites can be further enhanced by introducing elicitors into a tissue plant culture, such as jasmonic acid, UV-B or ozone. These compounds induce stress onto a plant leading to increased production of secondary metabolites. 
  To further increase the yield of SMs new approaches have been developed. A novel approach used by Evolva uses recombinant yeast S.cervisiae strains to produce secondary metabolitersnormally found in plants. The first successful chemical compound synthesised with Evolva was vanillin, widely used in the food beverage industry as flavouring.  The process involves inserting the desired secondary metabolite gene into an artificial chromosome in the recombinant yeast leading to synthesis of vanillin. Currently Evolva produces a wide array of chemicals  such as stevia, resveratrol or nootkatone.
caption: Plant tissue culture Oncidium leucochilum.
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