Phenolic Compounds: Introduction

Abstract

“Plant phenolics” and “polyphenols” are secondary natural metabolites arising biogenetically from either the shikimate/phenylpropanoid pathway, which directly provides phenylpropanoids, or the “polyketide” acetate/malonate pathway, which can produce simple phenols, or both, thus producing monomeric and polymeric phenols and polyphenols, which fulfill a very broad range of physiological roles in plants. Higher plants synthesize several thousand known different phenolic compounds. The ability to synthesize phenolic compounds has been selected throughout the course of evolution in different plant lineages, thus permitting plants to cope with the constantly changing environmental challenges over evolutionary time.

Plant phenolics are considered to have a key role as defense compounds when environmental stresses, such as high light, low temperatures, pathogen infection, herbivores, and nutrient deficiency, can lead to an increased production of free radicals and other oxidative species in plants. Both biotic and abiotic stresses stimulate carbon fluxes from the primary to the secondary metabolic pathways, thus inducing a shift of the available resources in favor of the synthesis of secondary products. An interesting link between primary and secondary metabolism couples the accumulation of the stress metabolite proline with the energy transfer toward phenylpropanoid biosynthesis via the oxidative pentose phosphate pathway. The alternating oxidation of NADPH by proline synthesis and reduction of NADP⁺ by the two oxidative steps of the oxidative pentose phosphate pathway lead to the simultaneous accumulation of phenolic compounds.