Production of Rare Ginsenosides Rg3 and Rh2 by Endophytic Bacteria from Panax ginseng

Abstract

The ginsenosides Rh2 and Rg3 induce tumor cell apoptosis, inhibit tumor cell proliferation, and restrain tumor invasion and metastasis. Despite Rh2 and Rg3 having versatile pharmacological activities, contents of them in natural ginseng are extremely low. To produce ginsenosides Rh2 and Rg3, the saponin-producing capacity of endophytic bacteria isolated from Panax ginseng was investigated. In this work, 81 endophytic bacteria isolates were taken from ginseng roots by tissue separation methods. Among them, strain PDA-2 showed the highest capacity to produce the rare ginsenosides; the concentrations of rare ginsenosides Rg3 and Rh2 reached 62.20 and 18.60 mg/L, respectively. On the basis of phylogenetic analysis, it was found that strain PDA-2 belongs to the genus Agrobacterium and was very close to Agrobacterium rhizogenes.

Ginsenoside Rh2 Suppresses Metastasis and Growth of Colon Cancer via miR-491

“…According to one study [22], ginsenoside Rh2 has the advantages of low toxicity, low molecular weight, and good fat solubility. And its ability to inhibit the proliferation and migration of tumor cells and angiogenesis has been well documented [23]. One study [24] reported that ginsenoside Rh2 affected tumorigenesis through regulating encoded proteins or encoded RNAs [24].…”

The Endosphere Microbiome of Ginseng

“…that could hydrolyse glucosidic linkages at C-20 and C-3 of ginsenosides converting Rb1 to Rg3 [ 29 ]. A bacterial endophyte from roots of P. ginseng with ginsenoside conversion abilities is Agrobacterium rhizogenes that converted common ginsenosides into the rare ginsenosides F2, Rg3 and Rh2 [ 30 ]. In P. notoginseng , the bacterial endophytes Brevundimonas and Bacillus could convert Rg1 to Rh1 and Rg1 to vinaginsenoside possibly via glycosyltransferase and oxidase activities, respectively [ 31 ].…”

“…Evidence thus far for archaeal endophytes in ginseng comes from a metagenomics study of DNA extracted from healthy disinfected root tissue, where 5% of the reads matched archaeal sequences, but no further description was provided [ 30 ]. While much lower than the 81% of reads matching bacteria, it was not that much lower than the 12% of reads matching eukaryotes, presumably mostly fungi.…”

Diversity of cultivable endophytic fungi in two Rubia plants and their potential for production of anti‐tumour Rubiaceae‐type cyclopeptides

“…Endophytic fungi are also considered as a promising and novel resource of natural bioactive compounds, which could be applied in the medicine, food, agriculture and cosmetics industries (Zhao et al 2011;Hyde et al 2019). Among them, some products are the same as those produced by their host plants, such as taxol (Stierle et al 1993), camptothecine (Shweta et al 2013), vinblastine (Yin and Sun 2011), ginsenosides Rg3 and Rh2 (Yan et al 2019), tanshinone I and IIA (Ming et al 2012), indicating that endophytic fungi have the ability to produce their host plant-derived bioactive compounds.…”