摘要：

A large amount of hazardous materials including heavy metals were released into the environment from natural and extensive anthropogenic activities, which cause soil, air, and water pollution and deterioration. At higher concentration, these metals exert toxic effects on plant and animal health including human. Among various traditional soil remediation technologies, use of phytoremediation to clean up metal(loid)-contaminated sites has gained increasing attention as an inexpensive, eco-friendly, and publicly acceptable remediation technology but has experienced varied successes in practice. Recent scientific discoveries that resulted from the application of molecular biology, bioinformatics, omics, and next-generation DNA sequencing technologies have assisted the remarkable impact of these immensely parallel platforms on genetics. In this context, genetic engineering has contributed rapid and significant changes in the crop improvement by offering a wide array of novel genes and traits which can be effectively inserted into candidate plants to raise its phytoremediation potential for metal removal. This review summarizes recent advances in the field of transgenic plant research with particular emphasis on genetic engineering of plants for heavy metal removal from contaminated soils, potential target genes, plant transformation methods, model systems for transgenic studies, optimization of transgene expressions in transgenic plants, along with risk assessment and mitigation strategies. Besides, the role of transgenic hairy roots and genetic engineering of plant symbionts in heavy metal phytoremediation is also discussed. However, translation of this knowledge into usable technologies is the need of the hour to accelerate phytoremediation as an eco-friendly and cost-effective technology.

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