Plant Cell Culture, Secondary Product Accumulation

Abstract

Plant cell culture is an effective technology for the production of valuable plant‐derived secondary metabolites which can be used as pharmaceuticals, food additives, nutraceuticals, etc. The biosynthesis of secondary metabolites by cell culture is safe, controllable, and economical in contrast to field cultivation of their parent plants; but it is also affected by many internal and external factors. In this chapter, the background of secondary product accumulation by plant cell culture is overviewed at first. The progress in recent years toward manipulation of environmental factors, bioprocessing strategies, and elicitation and signal transduction engineering are summarized with typical examples for each case. Furthermore, advances in modulation of secondary metabolite accumulation including heterogeneity engineering, metabolic engineering, and omics study of secondary metabolite biosynthesis, are also reviewed. Further developments in rational bioprocessing and in systems biotechnology of plant cells for metabolite production are expected in the future.

Phytochemical and flow cytometric analyses of Devil’s claw cell cultures

“…Further, following appropriate strategies, contents of target metabolites can be massively enhanced in cell cultures. For instance, 1,000-and 70-fold increases in berberine and rosmarinic acid contents have been obtained from cell suspension cultures of Thalictrum minor and Lavandula vera, respectively, compared to the parent plants (Georgiev et al 2006;Zhou and Zhong 2010). However, careful monitoring of culture growth is of high importance, since timely information on the physiological status of the plant cells allows more effective control and management of the biosynthetic process (Georgiev et al 2009).…”

Handling culture medium composition for optimizing plant cell suspension culture in shake flasks

“…Probably, this fact occurred because the high phosphate concentrations for these pepper cells were outside of the study range. On the other hand, the confirmed high cell growth at a low concentration of KNO 3 could be mainly explained by the major contribution of potassium ion concentration to the osmotic potential, a specific requirement for protein synthesis, and an activator for particular enzyme systems (Zhou and Zhong 2010a).…”

“…Most of these active ingredients are classified as secondary metabolites. Part of them are irrelevant by-products of metabolic routes due to indistinct enzyme activity, while some do have a remarkable role in the interaction of the plant with its environment, thus can be considered biologically active (Zhou and Zhong 2010b).…”

“…The production of secondary metabolites is often low, less than 1% dry weight, and depends on the plant species, plant's physiological and development stage as well as environmental factors (Zhou and Zhong 2010b;Wilson and Roberts 2012). Due to the limited availability of these Communicated by Sergio J. Ochatt.…”

Root Cultures, a Boon for the Production of Valuable Compounds: A Comparative Review

“…The lack of knowledge of underlying mechanisms involved in the biosynthesis of useful secondary metabolites is the first barrier in developing commercial processes. One of the biggest challenges in the industrial application of plant cell, tissue, or organ culture for the efficient production of commercially relevant bioactive compounds has been stated to have a low product yield [ 44 ].…”