Functional genomics to isolate genes involved in fragrance production for genetic engineering of scent in flowers.

Scents of flowers are usually made of mixtures of hundreds (or even thousands) of volatile compounds, normally emitted from flowers to attract pollinators. Different varieties of the same plant may emit a completely different array of compounds (Vainstein et al., 2001). Not only the presence or absence of an individual component might affect a particular flower scent, at times the same compound might have an agreeable or disagreeable scent depending on its concentration. Most of the research in flower scent has been aimed at elucidating the chemical structures of key scent components and in attempting their chemical synthesis for use in the perfumery and cosmetics industries. Despite the vast number of chemical structures involved, the large majority of scent compounds are biosynthesized by a surprisingly small number of metabolic pathways. These metabolic pathways are often ubiquitous, and specialization has developed through small but important modifications of ancestral genes and pathways (Pichersky and Gang, 2000).