Colour bio-factories: Towards scale-up production of anthocyanins in plant cell cultures

Abstract

Anthocyanins are widely distributed, glycosylated, water-soluble plant pigments, which give many fruits and flowers their red, purple or blue colouration. Their beneficial effects in a dietary context have encouraged increasing use of anthocyanins as natural colourants in the food and cosmetic industries. However, the limited availability and diversity of anthocyanins commercially have initiated searches for alternative sources of these natural colourants. In plants, high-level production of secondary metabolites, such as anthocyanins, can be achieved by engineering of regulatory genes as well as genes encoding biosynthetic enzymes. We have used tobacco lines which constitutively produce high levels of cyanidin 3-O-rutinoside, delphinidin 3-O-rutinoside or a novel anthocyanin, acylated cyanidin 3-O-(coumaroyl) rutinoside to generate cell suspension cultures. The cell lines are stable in their production rates and superior to conventional plant cell cultures. Scale-up of anthocyanin production in small scale fermenters has been demonstrated. The cell cultures have also proven to be a suitable system for production of 13C-labelled anthocyanins. Our method for anthocyanin production is transferable to other plant species, such as Arabidopsis thaliana, demonstrating the potential of this approach for making a wide range of highly-decorated anthocyanins. The tobacco cell cultures represent a customisable and sustainable alternative to conventional anthocyanin production platforms and have considerable potential for use in industrial and medical applications of anthocyanins.

Unraveling Plant Natural Chemical Diversity for Drug Discovery Purposes

“…Alternatively, the developments in plant transformation and transfection technology offering rapid and scalable biosynthesis allow for considering more and more the use of plant-based expression platforms like Nicotiana or Arabidopsis spp. (Fuentes et al, 2016;Lu et al, 2017;Reed et al, 2017;Appelhagen et al, 2018). Indeed they are considered genetically more flexible than the native plant sources and offer in some cases several advantages even over microbial hosts that can lack the endogenous biosynthetic precursors of these NP or intracellular compartments as endoplasmic reticulum related with the implementation of enzymes like cytochrome P450s (Appelhagen et al, 2018).…”

Designing Function-Specific Plant Systems (FSPSs) for Sustainable Urban Development

“…[50][51][52] Examples include augmenting the native abilities of plants to perform specific functions (such as biotransformation of industrial toxins 53 or production of insect-repellant volatiles 41 ) by over-expressing key enzymes or by altering plant metabolomes (Fig. 4); developing new raw materials on-site that meet the needs of urban construction and consumption 54 ; locally producing natural plant-derived colorants for urban textile and food industries to replace toxic chemicals 55 ; and genetically engineering plants to use urban resources (water, nitrogen etc.) more sustainably to produce drugs/food for urban populations.…”

Engineering Lactococcus lactis for the production of unusual anthocyanins using tea as substrate

“…Additionally, the purification of a single chemical from complex plant matrices is often difficult due to the presence of structurally similar compounds. Plant cell cultures provide https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ymben.2019.04.002 Received 4 February 2019; Received in revised form 4 April 2019; Accepted 5 April 2019 a promising strategy for the production of specific molecules, but to date they have had limited commercial success in food biotechnology applications as result of limited culture yields and/or poorly optimized production systems (Davies and Deroles, 2014;Appelhagen et al, 2018). Chemical synthesis of anthocyanins is complex and often produces large amounts of toxic waste.…”