Cytochrome P450 Monooxygenases as a Tool for Metabolizing of Herbicides in Plants

ABSTRACTPlants like most other organisms evolved a remarkable battery of metabolic reactions to metabolize many different xenobiotics. In recent years the use of biochemical and molecular technics associated with enzymatic techniques have greatly advanced our understanding of the metabolic reactions (oxidation, reduction, hydrolysis, conjugation, etc.) not only in plants. In addition recombinant DNA techniques allowed the isolation, cloning and expression in plants of a number of foreign genes, including foreign detoxification genes for tolerance to xenobiotic compounds. Cytochrome P450 are one of the major plant enzyme classes which mediate the oxidative degradation of xenobiotic chemicals, including herbicides._The transgenic tobacco and potato plants expressing CYP1A1 and its fused enzyme with yeast reductase showed tolerance to the herbicide chlorotoluron. Some of them are tolerant to the herbicides diuron and atrazine. The tolerance of the obtained transgenic plants seem to be due to the one and the ...