Neurological diseases are one of the serious health hazards faced by mankind for decades. Neurite outgrowth is a key
factor responsible for proper neuronal development. Any misplacement in the process could lead to neurological diseases
like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Treatment with the available synthetic drugs imparts many difficulties to the patients
due to the side effects. Compounds from natural sources can be considered as an effective replacement for this. Mucuna
pruriens, used in traditional ayurvedic medicine, contains L-3,4-dihydroxy phenylalanine (L-DOPA) in its seeds, which
possesses medicinal effects against neurological diseases. In this regard, seed extracts of M. pruriens originated from
Thailand and India, were analyzed for their neuroprotective effects in Neuro2a cells. Hexane, ethyl acetate and ethanol
extracts were found to be non-toxic to the viability of the cells. Ethanol extracts of M. pruriens of Thai origin (MTE),
hexane extracts of M. pruriens of Indian origin (MIH) and ethyl acetate extracts of M. pruriens of Indian origin (MIEA)
were able to induce neurite outgrowth in Neuro2a cells. Interestingly, both MTE and MIH induced neurite outgrowth
dependent on Teneurin-4 (Ten-4) transmembrane protein whereas MIEA did the same independent of Ten-4, which was
confirmed by real time PCR and gene silencing approach. The present study suggested that M. pruriens can be used as
a potential drug in the treatment of neurological diseases as it can induce neurite outgrowth by multiple mechanisms,
which will be of great use in the field of medicine.
Flavonoid is an industrially-important compound due to its high pharmaceutical and cosmeceutical values. However,
conventional methods in extracting and synthesizing flavonoids are costly, laborious and not sustainable due to small
amount of natural flavonoids, large amounts of chemicals and space used. Biotechnological production of flavonoids
represents a viable and sustainable route especially through the use of metabolic engineering strategies in microbial
production hosts. In this review, we will highlight recent strategies for the improving the production of flavonoids
using synthetic biology approaches in particular the innovative strategies of genetically-encoded biosensors for in
vivo metabolite analysis and high-throughput screening methods using fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS).
Implementation of transcription factor based-biosensor for microbial flavonoid production and integration of systems
and synthetic biology approaches for natural product development will also be discussed.