Alkamide production from hairy root cultures of Echinacea

Abstract

Hairy root cultures of Echinacea, one of the most important medicinal plants in the US, represent a valuable alternative to field cultivation for the production of bioactive secondary metabolites. In this study, the three most economically important species of Echinacea (Echinacea purpurea, Echinacea pallida, and Echinacea angustifolia) were readily transformed with two strains of Agrobacterium that produce the hairy root phenotype. Transformed roots of all three species exhibited consistent accelerated growth and increased levels of alkamide production. Optimization of the culture of Echinacea hairy roots was implemented to enhance both growth and alkamide production concomitantly. The use of halfstrength Gamborg's B5 medium supplemented with 3.0% sucrose was twice as effective in maintaining hairy root production than any other media tested. The addition of indolebutyric acid increased the growth rate of roots by as much as 14-fold. Alkamide production increased severalfold in response to the addition of the elicitor, jasmonic acid, but did not respond to the addition of indolebutyric acid. Induced accumulation of the important bioactive compounds, alkamides 2 and 8, was observed both in transformed roots and in response to jasmonic acid treatments. The results of this study demonstrate the efficacy of hairy root cultures of Echinacea for the in vitro production of alkamides and establish guidelines for optimum yield.

The influence of Agrobacterium rhizogenes on induction of hairy roots and ß-carboline alkaloids production in Tribulus terrestris L.

“…Similarly, several workers have also used the liquid medium to establish the hairy root growth (He-Ping et al 2011;Pavlov et al 2005;Romero et al 2009;Sivanesan and Ryong Jeong 2009). Few previous studies support this idea that IBA could positively affect growth and secondary metabolism of various medicinal plants (Kim et al 2003;Baque et al 2010).…”

Influence of carbon sources on growth and GC-MS basedmetabolite profiling of Arnica montana L. hairy roots

“…It was recently found that sugars (monosaccharide and disaccharide) induce signals that affect metabolism, development, growth, and gene expression of plants (Praveen and Murthy, 2012). The production of numerous biologically active compounds through hairy roots (such as hyoscyamine, isoflavones, sennosides A and B, pyranocoumarins, gymnemic acid, ginsenoside) was found to be affected by initial concentrations of carbon sources in the nutrient media (Liang et al, 2004;He et al, 2005;Pavlov et al, 2009;Xu et al, 2009;Romero et al, 2009;Nagella et al, 2013;Kochan et al, 2014). To date, there have been no studies regarding the effects of type and concentration of sugars on growth and accumulation of metabolites of hairy root cultures of A. montana and this motivated our study.…”

High-frequency transgenic plant regeneration and plumbagin production through methyl jasmonate elicitation from hairy roots of Plumbago indica L.

“…The neoplastic roots, produced by A. rhizogenes infection, characterized by high growth rate are demonstrated to produce higher levels of secondary metabolites or amounts comparable to that of intact plants (Romero et al 2009;Rostampour et al 2009;Shinde et al 2009). In Plumbago spp.…”

“…2001, 2002, 2003, 2004). The potential of hairy roots as a source of secondary metabolites has been recognized in several plants especially of that having root as the officinal part (Romero et al 2009;Rostampour et al 2009;Ruiz-May et al 2009;Shinde et al 2009). In these plants, large-scale production of hairy roots helps to reduce the dependence on intact plants for the drug and also to cut off the mass destruction of natural resources.…”