Plant biotechnology includes applications of technological tools in plant sciences. Several significant achievements in plant biology such as cell and tissue culture, regeneration of whole plants from somatic cells, and genetic recombination have resulted in applications such as rapid propagation, developing uniform healthy plant saplings, somatic hybrids from naturally incompatible species, germ plasm storage, improved transgenic…
One of the major challenges facing large-scale production of secondary metabolites in culture is the tendency of the cultured cells to accumulate the biosynthetic products intracellularly. There have been attempts to permeabilize cell walls of the cultured cells to enable release. This has been tried with DMSO, making media acidic and even with physical treatments…
Since many secondary metabolites are generated in plants in response to external stimuli that may be physical, chemical, or microbial, in cultures, many fungal, yeast extracts and a number of organic and inorganic compounds have been found to induce secondary metabolite formation in cell and organ cultures. It appears that these elicitors may be giving the right…
Secondary metabolite production is greatly influenced by other culture conditions that need to be identified and optimized for maximum production. Intensity of light and wavelength used has an influence over secondary metabolite production. In cultures of Dioscorea deltoidea, while blue light stimulated alkaloid production, red light decreased it. Similar reports are associated with cell culture accumulation of…
Several Cinchona species are sources of the anti-malarial drug quinine and anti-arrhythmic drug quinidine and other related alkaloids. Quinine remains an important anti-malarial drug and economic production of quinine and related alkaloids from tissue culture is of high commercial value. There has not been much success, however, in their production in cell culture as was…
Catharanthus roseus is the source of important anti-cancer drugs, vincristine and vinblastine, which are produced in very low yields requiring huge quantities of the whole plant and extensive chromatographic processing for their isolation. Root suspension cell cultures of C. roseus produced alkaloids when the media concentration of growth hormone 2,4-D was reduced. Several workers have reported the influence…
Shikonin was the first phytoconstituent to be commercially produced from tissue culture. It is a nathaquinone dye with anti-bacterial, anti-inflammatory properties and has been used in the treatment of burns, wounds, and hemorrhoids. A valuable vegetable dye, it gives a spectrum of colours ranging from red, purple, to blue. It is obtained from Lythospermum erythrorhizon, a plant…
Plant secondary metabolites are biosynthetically derived from primary metabolites—those having an essential role in basic cell metabolism and are not essential for the survival of the individual plant cell. Though being non nutritive and not directly required for growth, they play ecologically significant role in how plants deal with their environment and are important for…
These modifications may be possible when few genes have to be manipulated. However, plant secondary metabolite biogenesis happens due to a complex and multiple cascade of metabolic reactions, controlled by multiple enzymes. It may still be a long time before we have transgenic plants acting as biochemical factories generating the needed quantity of secondary metabolites.
The bacterium having the vector with the desired gene is put in the media having the sterilized and freshly cut plant explant which may be colyledon, leaf, hypocotyl, or stem meristem. The bacteria is able to transfect the explant cells after which the medium is treated with antibiotics to phase out bacterial cells. Transformed Cell…