In vitro strategies for the enhancement of secondary metabolite production in plants: a review

Abstract

Background Plants are the prime source of vital secondary metabolites (SMs) which are medicinally important for drug development, and these secondary metabolites are often used by plants in the various important tasks like defense against herbivory, interspecies defenses and against different types of stresses. For humans, these secondary metabolites are important as medicines, pigments, flavorings and drugs. Because most of the pharmaceutical industries are highly dependent on medicinal plants and their extraction, these medicinal plants are getting endangered. Main body Plant cell culture technologies are introduced as a viable mechanism for producing and studying SMs of plants. Various types of in vitro strategies (elicitation, hairy root culture system, suspension culture system, etc.) have been considerably used for the improvement of the production of SMs of plants. For the enhancement of SM production, suspension culture and elicitation are mainly used, but hairy root culture and other organ cultures are proved to satisfy the demand of secondary metabolites. Now, it is easy to control and manipulate the pathways that produce the plant secondary metabolites. Conclusions Techniques like plant cell, tissue and organ cultures provide a valuable method for the production of medicinally significant SMs. In recent years, most of the in vitro strategies are used due to knowledge and regulation of SM pathway in commercially valuable plants. In future, these things will provide a valuable method to sustain the feasibility of medicinal plants as the renewable sources of medicinally important compounds, and these methods will provide successful production of desired, important, valuable and also unknown compounds.

Plant Nutrition for Human Health: A Pictorial Review on Plant Bioactive Compounds for Sustainable Agriculture

“…Plant tissue culture is considered a promising tool and a perpetual source for producing plant bioactive compounds, as reported by several studies, such as Espinosa-Leal et al [228], Chandran et al [18], Arora et al [229], Fazili et al [88], and Mishra et al [230]. Many methods could be employed for producing plant bioactives on a large scale, such as using plant in vitro tissue culture through organogenesis (including both micropropagation and hairy root culture) or cell suspension culture using callogenesis [228].…”

“…Enormous plants, mainly medicinal plants, that can produce bioactive secondary metabolites include Chinese medicinal herbs, as reported by El-Ramady et al [86] and in Tables 2 and 3. The production of bioactive plant secondary metabolites is common using in vitro technologies [87,88]. All plant species can form primary metabolites in cells, but secondary metabolites vary by plant species and can be produced through metabolic pathways derived from the primary metabolic pathways.…”

“…Enormous plants, mainly medicinal plants, that can produce bioactive secondary metabolites include Chinese medicinal herbs, as reported by El-Ramady et al [86] and in Tables 2 and 3. The production of bioactive plant secondary metabolites is common using in vitro technologies [87,88]. On the other hand, nutraceuticals have great potential for human health.…”

Plant-based expression platforms to produce high-value metabolites and proteins

“…Several SMs have utility as therapeutics for human diseases. Many plant expression platforms like cell/suspension culture, callus culture, organ culture, hairy root culture, shoot culture, and transgenics are established for the heterologous production of SMs ( Fazili et al., 2022 ). However, the accumulation of SMs can be enhanced further by a better understanding and optimization of metabolic pathways, the rate-limiting step(s), and genetic regulations.…”

Mulberroside F from In Vitro Culture of Mulberry and the Potential Use of the Root Extracts in Cosmeceutical Applications

“…Plant tissue culture is now a reliable and affordable method for producing bioactive compounds with industrial significance [ 20 , 21 , 22 ]. This technique has been utilized for in vitro plant cultivation under a controllable environment, allowing for the production of multiple plants in a short period [ 23 ].…”