Biotechnological approaches for production of bioactive secondary metabolites in Nigella sativa: an up-to-date review

Abstract

Medicinal and aromatic plants and their refined natural products have gained global attraction for their therapeutic potential against many human diseases. Nigella sativa is a medicinally important plant, commonly known as Black cumin or Black seed is a dicotyledon plant of the Ranunculaceae family. It is in common use for a longer time in history as preservative and spice and has also been extensively utilized by different communities around the globe. Black cumin has been an eminent component of traditional medicine systems like Unani and Tibb, Ayurveda and Siddha. Its biological activities include antidiarrheal, analgesic, antibacterial, liver tonic, diurectic, digestive agent and to treat several skin disorders. Furthermore, the therapeutic properties also include antidiabetic, anticancer, antihypertensive, anti-inflammatory, hepatoprotective, spasmolytic and bronchodialator. This is all because of its miraculous healing power that it has been ranked as top ranked, among evidence based herbal medicines. The literature supports that the pharmacological activities of Nigella sativa are mainly because of the essential oil and its constituents particularly thymoquinone. The current review is an attempt to present a detailed literature survey regarding chemical composition, phytochemistry, therapeutic potential and biotechnological approaches to enhance the medicinal potential of this valuable plant.

Effective callus induction and plant regeneration in callus and protoplast cultures of Nigella damascena L.

“…In the second existing report, callus was induced on the endosperm tissue of mature seeds, however subsequent development of somatic embryos was arrested at the globular stage, probably due to triploid status of the cells (Sethi and Rangaswamy 1976). More data concerning callus induction, suspension culture initiation, and plant regeneration are available for the closely related N. sativa (for review, see Kazmi et al 2019). It remains unrevealed whether there is any analogy between N. sativa and N. damascena in response to cell and tissue culture in vitro.…”

Red light controlled callus morphogenetic patterns and secondary metabolites production in Withania somnifera L.

“…Considering its paramount medicinal significance novel means and ways should be implemented on the conservation and sustainable utilization of this important plant [5]. In comparison to conventional cultivation procedures, plant callus cultures have emerged as a promising platform for the biosynthesis of valuable metabolites in limited time and space [5,6].…”

Improved Production of Industrially Important Essential Oils Through Elicitation in the Adventitious Roots of Artemisia amygdalina

“…Herbal medicines are getting resurgence for their worldwide recognition in the treatment of many diseases, especially in the era of antibiotic resistance, where many commercially available synthetic antibiotics are becoming impotent against several human diseases [1,2]. The therapeutic potential of these herbal medicines is by virtue of the presence of important natural products also called secondary metabolites.…”

“…Conventional propagation in A. amygdalina through seeds is limited due to the higher mortality rate of seedlings in early stages of growth. Biotechnological methods, especially plant cell culture technology, has provided suitable platforms for the production of healthy plant material and useful secondary metabolites year-round in any season under aseptic growth conditions in a limited space and shorter time [2,14,15]. Adventitious roots (AR) culture technology has been proven as an efficient cell culture technology for quality production of biomass and health-promoting metabolites and is also called a metabolites biosynthetic factory [16,17].…”

“…Although induction and growth of AR is a complex process, several factors, such as nutritional status of the culture media, type and concentration of phytohormones and in vitro growth conditions, are directly linked to AR growth and proliferation [18]. Elicitation is one of the most successful strategies used in vitro for enhancement of production of plant secondary metabolites in a lot of medicinal plants, in order to meet the higher industrial demands for making pharmaceutical products and drugs [2,19]. It is an abstinent method and has been recognized as a propitious technique for the production of the metabolites in many plants species, where applications of synthetic biology, metabolic engineering or genetic transformation methods are difficult to implement due to lack of proper genetic information about the specific metabolite biosynthetic pathway [20,21].…”