Plants produce a vast array of secondary metabolites. There are three major groups of them: terpenes, nitrogen-containing secondary metabolites and phenolics. These molecules have a great impact on biology of plants and environment. Here, we briefly introduce flavonoids ? one of the largest class of plant phenolics. Their biosynthesis, properties and different functions are presented. Special attention is paid to legume plants and a role of flavonoids as signaling molecules in symbiosis. For human nutrition, flavonoids represent compounds with health-promoting activities and such properties for some of them are also indicated.
Modern biotechnology is looking for a new source of high quality pharmaceuticals. Interestingly, many of such pharmaceuticals are often natural products provided by plants. An example is a vast array of secondary metabolites. Apart from extraction of these compounds from plant material, many different strategies have been proposed to efficiently produce some of them, using suspension cell cultures. Plants are also a good source of many recombinant proteins, offering a possibility of posttranslational modifications which are limited in prokaryotes. Efficient systems of stable and transient heterologous protein expression for the industrial scale were developed. Here, we briefly introduce such strategies and give examples of different plant products obtained by applying them.