Review of Monk Fruit: Application and Biosynthesis of Mogrosides

Monk Fruit is a food and drug homologous plant in China. Its core active component is Mogroside V, which has a variety of biological activities such as regulating blood sugar.It's also a star molecule of natural sweetener. This article reviews its applications in traditional medicine and food, as well as research progress in germplasm preservation, variety breeding, and synthesis pathways. The low content of Mogroside V is the core bottleneck of current industrial development, and the strategy of integrating molecular design breeding with synthetic biotechnology may be a means to break through production capacity limitations.

 Monk Fruit has a medicinal history of more than 300 years and has been included in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia since 1977. Modern research has confirmed that its main active ingredient, mogroside V, has many pharmacological effects, such as cough relieving, phlegm resolving, hypoglycemic, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, liver protecting and neuroprotective. In the food field, mogroside V, as a natural sweetener with high sweetness and zero calorie, is widely used in low sugar drinks, health food and drugs, and has been approved for use by China, the United States, Japan and other countries

For Monk Fruit breeding, the core goal is to increase yield and content of mogroside V. Through innovative strategies such as hybrid breeding and polyploid breeding, multiple excellent new varieties have been successfully cultivated, including the high-yield variety "Yongqing 1" and the seedless variety "Yaoyuan Seedless 1".

In the aspect of mogrosides biosynthesis, researchers at home and abroad have successfully analyzed the pathway of mogrosides biosynthesis: it starts from the MVA pathway, and is catalyzed by key enzymes such as SQE, CDS, CYP450, UGTs, and gradually generates the end product mogrosides, whose sweetness is related to the number of glycosides, connection formula, etc. (Figure 2). In order to solve the problems of low content of natural mogrosides and high extraction cost, the heterologous synthesis of Mogrol, mogroside V and other components has been realized through microbial cell factories (yeast, Escherichia coli), plant chassis (tobacco, cucumber, etc.) and cell suspension culture platforms, opening up a new path for large-scale production.

The low content of mogrosides is still the main bottleneck restricting the industrial upgrading. In the future, it is necessary to integrate precision breeding and synthetic biotechnology, break through the capacity constraints, and release the commercial potential of Monk Fruit.

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