Elicitation as an essential strategy for enhancing anthraquinone accumulation in hairy root cultures of Rubia tinctorum

PERASSOLO, MARÍA; CARDILLO, ALEJANDRA BEATRIZ; BUSTO, VICTOR; RIVIÈRE, STÉPHANIE; CEREZO, JULIETA; GIULIETTI, ANA MARIA; RODRIGUEZ TALOU, JULIAN

Hairy Root Cultures (HRCs) based Applications

Springer Singapore

Año: 2020; p. 133 - 152

Plant-derived drugs represent a significant proportion of the pharmaceutical market. Plant in vitro culture has emerged as a useful platform for producing secondary metabolites due to its multiple advantages: production under controlled culture conditions, independence from geographic, seasonal or weather conditions, and since it avoids the use of land and the extraction from the natural source, it has a low environmental impact. Since the production of secondary metabolites in plant in vitro cultures can be low, there are several strategies that can be applied to enhance the production of these compounds. Elicitation has been widely used to increase secondary metabolite production in plant in vitro cultures. This phenomenon involves the treatment of plant cultures with different agents (physical, chemical or biological) that triggers a defence response,which generally involves the production of secondary metabolites. Anthraquinones are secondarymetabolites traditionally used as dyes that exhibit interesting therapeutic applications, such as antiviral (against Hepatitis C virus), and as photosensitizers of cancer cells. In this chapter, we will present an approach for the establishment of hairy root cultures of Rubia tinctorum, and a protocolfor elicitation with methyl jasmonate. We will also discuss the possibility of combine elicitation with other strategies, such as in situ removal with Miglyol® 812.