An Updated Review on Essential Oils from Lauraceae Plants: Chemical Composition and Genetic Characteristics of Biosynthesis

Abstract

Globally, plant-derived natural products such as essential oils serve as primary sources of functional substances for spices, pharmaceuticals, and other applications. With the increasing focus on health and well-being, alongside ongoing public health challenges, there is a critical need to enhance the deep utilization of natural plant products. Lauraceae family essential oils, characterized by their aromatic, volatile properties and notable biological activities (e.g., antibacterial, antioxidant, insect-repellent), hold significant application value across fragrance, cosmetics, chemical industries, biological pesticides, and medicine. Integrating multi-disciplinary data from biology, genomics, metabolomics, and related fields can accelerate comprehensive insights into the biosynthesis mechanisms and functional roles of these essential oils, thereby promoting the development and application of Lauraceae natural products. This review systematically summarizes the accumulation patterns and compositional characteristics of essential oils across diverse genera of Lauraceae. It further explores the evolutionary dynamics of terpene synthase (TPS) gene families and key genes involved in terpenoid biosynthesis pathways, leveraging genomic datasets from Lauraceae species. Finally, the review highlights future research trends for optimizing Lauraceae essential oil resource utilization and advancing molecular breeding of high-oil-content species within the family.

Keywords: biosynthesis; genome; oil cell; terpene; terpene synthases; useful plant species.

Figure 1

The uses of Lauraceae species. (a) The number of Lauraceae species in different plant uses. In the figure, the horizontal coordinate values corresponding to the sticks indicate the number of species in 38 genera (Actinodaphne, Aiouea, Alseodaphne, Aniba, Apollonias, Beilschmiedia, Caryodaphnopsis, Cassytha, Chlorocardium, Cinnamomum, Cryptocarya, Damburneya, Dehaasia, Dicypellium, Endiandra, Endlicheria, Eusideroxylon, Hexapora, Hypodaphnis, Laurus, Licaria, Lindera, Litsea, Machilus, Mezilaurus, Nectandra, Neocinnamomum, Neolitsea, Nothaphoebe, Ocotea, Persea, Phoebe, Pleurothyrium, Sassafras, Sextonia, Sinosassafras, Triadodaphne, Umbellularia) of Lauraceae used for the respective purposes, while the humps represent the enrichment degree. (b) Cluster analysis of plant uses in each genus of Lauraceae. The heatmap was generated using the complete-linkage hierarchical clustering algorithm and Euclidean distance metric on unprocessed data. (c) Main biological activities of the essential oils from Lauraceae plants. MA: materials (woods, fibres, cork, cane, tannins, latex, resins, gums, waxes, oils, lipids, etc. and their derived products); ME: medicines (both human and veterinary); HF: human food (food, including beverages, for humans only); AF: animal food (forage and fodder for vertebrate animals only); FU: fuels (wood, charcoal, petroleum substitutes, fuel alcohols, etc.—these have been separated from MATERIALS because of their importance); PO: poisons (plants that are poisonous to vertebrates and invertebrates, both accidentally and usefully, e.g., for hunting and fishing); EU: environmental uses (examples include intercrops and nurse crops, ornamentals, barrier hedges, shade plants, windbreaks, soil improvers, plants for revegetation and erosion control, wastewater purifiers, indicators of the presence of metals, pollution, or underground water); GS: gene sources (wild relatives of major crops which may possess traits associated to biotic or abiotic resistance and may be valuable for breeding programs); IF: inverterbrate food (only plants eaten by invertebrates useful to humans, such as silkworms, lac insects and edible grubs, are covered here); SU: social uses (plants used for social purposes, which are not definable as food or medicines, for instance, masticatories, smoking materials, narcotics, hallucinogens and psychoactive drugs, contraceptives and abortifacients, and plants with ritual or religious significance).

Figure 2

The distribution pattern of the secretory cells. (a) A full-expanded leaf. (b) A young stem. OL: Oil cell. ML: mucilage cell.

Figure 3

The main chemical components and structures of each genus in the Lauraceae family. The volatile components of each genus in Lauraceae are summarized from the references in Table S1, and the relative content in the figure represents the highest content of the substance that has been identified. The green arrows from left to right indicate the sequence of differentiation time in Lauraceae plants, from early to late. The pink highlights indicate monoterpenoids, the yellow highlights indicate sesquiterpenoids, and the purple highlights indicate other types of compounds.

Figure 4

Key genes for essential oil synthesis in Lauraceae. (a) Main components of essential oil in Lauraceae species where key genes are located. S1, S21, S22, etc., are the corresponding numbers of the species in Table S1. (b) Phylogenetic tree of the TPS genes. Based on MEGA 11.0.13 software, the MUSCLE method was used to perform the alignment of TPS amino acid sequences (Table S2). The tree was constructed using the neighbor-joining method with the bootstrap value set to 1000. (c) Plant terpene biosynthesis pathway. The dashed box contains the terpene biosynthetic pathway of Lauraceae. TPS genes are in green and transcription factors are in blue.

Figure 5

Phylogeny of TPS genes. Phylogenetic analysis was carried out using the maximum likelihood method. Bootstrap values are shown as a percentage of 1000 replicates. Phylogenetic analysis was conducted on the TPS gene families of 8 Lauraceae species and 2 other plant species.