drugs readily available to the patients at affordable prices, the endophytic fungi from C. roseus plant was isolated, thus discovering a fungus AA-CRL-6, which produces vinblastine and vincristine in appreciable amounts (Kumar et al. 2013).
Conditions for co-culturing the cell suspensions of C. roseus and Vinca major in shake flask and bioreactor are described here for the possible complementation of the terpenoid indole alkaloid pathway. Catharanthus cells could be reared on an MS medium containing NAA and kinetin. A 20- and 40-fold increment in the biomass of these co-cultures was achieved within 30 days in a stirred tank bioreactor. Out of these two alkaloids, compound RF1 was found to possess strong antioxidant potential (Verma et al. 2012). The 3′,4′-di-O-methylquercetin-7-O-[(4′′→13′′′)-2′′′,6′′′,10′′′,14′′′-tetramethylhexadec-13′′′-ol-14′′′-enyl]-β-D-glucopyranoside, 4′-O-methylkaempferol-3-O-[(4′→13′′′)-2′′′,6′′′,10′′′,14′′′-tetramethylhexadecan-13′′′-olyl]-β-D-glucopyranoside, 3′,4′-di-O-methylbutin-7-O-[(6′′→1′′′)-3′′′,11′′′-dimethyl-7′′′-methylenedodeca-3′′′, 10′′′-dienyl]-β-D-glucopyranoside, and 4′-O-methylbutin-7-O-[(6′′→1′′′)-3′′′,11′′′-dimethyl-7′′′-hydroxymethylenedodecanyl]-β-D-glucopyranoside were isolated from the methanol extract of hairy roots of C. roseus (Canel et al. 1998; Bhadra et al. 1993; Batra et al. 2004; Chung et al. 2007, 2009; Hanafy et al. 2016).
The effect of plant growth regulators 2,4-D inhibited alkaloid production (Whitmer et al. 1998a; Zhao et al. 2001a), even when the precursors, loganin and tryptamine, are added to C. roseus cell cultures (El-Sayed and Verpoorte 2002; Zargar et al. 2010; Zhou et al. 2012; Zhu et al. 2015). Similarly, the addition of ethylene inhibited the production of ajmalicine (Lee and Shuler 1991, 2000). However, the combination of benzyladenine or kinetin with indole-3-acetic acid led to an enhancement of alkaloid production. Moreover, it was found that high levels of ajmalicine were released in the spent media of C. roseus shoot grown in the presence of a high level of BA and a low level of IAA (Whitmer et al. 1998b; Satdive et al. 2003), whereas the addition of a high concentration of IAA and a low concentration of BA resulted in high levels of ajmalicine accumulated in the shoots (Zhao et al. 2001c; Kumar and Ahmad 2013). In addition, terpenoid indole alkaloids (TIA) biosynthesis improved when C. roseus callus were treated with BA and IAA and exposed to the light, especially vindoline and serpentine compared with callus that was not exposed to light (Zhao et al. 2001a; Ruiz-May et al. 2009; Sabry et al. 2010; Zhao et al. 2001d).
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27 Kirtikar,
