Hairy Root Cultures as a Source of Phenolic Antioxidants: Simple Phenolics, Phenolic Acids, Phenylethanoids, and Hydroxycinnamates

Abstract

Plant-derived antioxidants are intrinsic components of human diet and factors implicated in tolerance mechanisms against environmental stresses in both plants and humans. They are being used as food preservatives and additives or ingredients of cosmetics. For nearly forty years, Rhizobium rhizogenes-transformed roots (hairy roots) have been studied in respect to their usability as producers of plant specialized metabolites of different, primarily medical applications. Moreover, the hairy root cultures have proven their value as a tool in crop plant improvement and in plant secondary metabolism investigations. Though cultivated plants remain a major source of plant polyphenolics of economic importance, the decline in biodiversity caused by climate changes and overexploitation of natural resources may increase the interest in hairy roots as a productive and renewable source of biologically active compounds. The present review examines hairy roots as efficient producers of simple phenolics, phenylethanoids, and hydroxycinnamates of plant origin and summarizes efforts to maximize the product yield. Attempts to use Rhizobium rhizogenes-mediated genetic transformation for inducing enhanced production of the plant phenolics/polyphenolics in crop plants are also mentioned.

Metabolomics Reveals Rubiadin Accumulation and the Effects of Methyl Jasmonate Elicitation in Damnacanthus major Calli

“…However, this pathway was dramatically decreased upon adding 200 µM MeJA as asparagine was altered to stimulate specialized metabolite production [ 51 ]. As 200 µM MeJA increased the accumulation of asparagine, which acts as an enzyme stimulator, quinic acid entered the phenylpropanoid pathway and was altered to other specialized metabolites [ 52 , 53 ]. Thus, MeJA dose-response experiments were important for discovering an efficient alternative method for producing specialized metabolites with improved cell growth rates.…”

Upscaling biomass production of rosmarinic acid-rich hairy root cultures of Agastache rugosa

“…Therefore, the successful implementation of biotechnology for production of phytochemicals requires tedious optimization and upscaling experiments to ne tune the culture conditions to simultaneously achieve a possibly high biomass growth rate and superior metabolic pro le. Hairy roots induced by infection of plant tissues with Rhizobium (Agrobacterium) rhizogenes are a well-established system for such purposes in hundreds of medicinal plant species (Malarz et al 2023;Flores-Félix et al 2020). The hairy root cultures are also exploited as industrial source of extract for pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries, for example ginseng, echinacea, coleus (Arpita 2021).…”