Abstract: The terpenoids represent the largest class of natural products with biological activities of antitumor and anti-allergy,thus they have been widely applied in the area of food,cosmetics and medical health,presenting huge potential and broad market prospects. Recent years,researchers applied functional genomics and metabonomics approaches to deeply study the biosynthesis pathways of terpenoids,providing tons of data for their synthetic biology. The construction of engineered yeasts using synthetic biology enabled the efficient synthesis of multi-target terpenoids,and highly improved the overall production level. Thus,the synthetic biology approach is expected to be an efficient way of producing plant-derived terpenoids. First,we introduced the concept of synthetic biology,summarized the important functions and applications of plant-derived terpenoids,briefly reviewed the biosynthesis pathways,and concluded the alternative production ways. Then,we discussed the design strategies of synthetic biology for terpenoids thoroughly. Finally,we elaborated the advances on the biosynthetic biology of varied terpenes with common terpenes as the studied cases.

Key words: terpenoids, biosynthesis, terpene synthesis and design, progresses on synthetic biology