The biosynthesis of rosmarinic acid in suspension cultures of Coleus blumei

Abstract

Suspension cultures of Coleus blumei accumulate very high amounts of rosmarinic acid, an ester of caffeic acid and 3,4-dihydroxyphenyllactate, in medium with elevated sucrose concentrations. Since the synthesis of this high level of rosmarinic acid occurs in only five days of the culture period, the activities of the enzymes involved in the biosynthesis are very high. Therefore all the enzymes necessary for the formation of rosmarinic acid from the precursors phenylalanine and tyrosine could be isolated from cell cultures of Coleus blumei: phenylalanine ammonia-lyase, cinnamic acid 4-hydroxylase, hydroxycinnamoyl:CoA ligase, tyrosine aminotransferase, hydroxyphenylpyruvate reductase, rosmarinic acid synthase and two microsomal 3-and 3'-hydroxylases. The main characteristics of these enzymes of the proposed biosynthetic pathway of rosmarinic acid will be described.

Cloning and characterisation of rosmarinic acid synthase from Melissa officinalis L.

“…The cellular RA content still increases until the end of the observation period due to residually present and active RAS protein. Growth, RA accumulation and RAS activity in a suspension culture of M. officinalis essentially behaved like the corresponding data in C. blumei suspension cultures (Petersen et al, 1994), however, the level of RA accumulation remained lower and the effect of an increased sucrose concentration in the medium was less prominent (data not shown). In C. blumei, doubling the sucrose content of the medium (2 ?…”

“…The cultures were kept in CB-medium with 2% sucrose. Increasing the sucrose concentration of the medium to 4% resulted in an enhanced RA content (doubling from 3.5% to 6.7% in a previous experiment; data not shown), but the increase was not as significant as observed for cell cultures of C. blumei (Petersen et al, 1994). Additionally, the mRNA expression profile of RAS was examined.…”

“…RA up to 21% of the cell dry wt. has been detected in suspension cultures of C. blumei after only 10 days of cultivation in a medium with high sucrose concentration (Ulbrich et al, 1985;Petersen et al, 1994). For this reason, suspension cultures of C. blumei have been a good system to study the biosynthetic enzymes.…”

The effects of jasmonic acid and methyl jasmonate on rosmarinic acid production in Mentha × piperita cell suspension cultures

“…The same schema of RA accumulation, where its content increased as cells grew, reached the maximum and thereafter decreased rapidly, was observed in many cases. Suspension cultures of Coleus blumei synthesized and accumulated RA during a few days, at the end of growth phase (Petersen 1992). The same phenomenon was also noticed in the case of Agastache rugosa suspension cultures (Kim et al 2001).…”

Micropropagation of Coleus blumei from nodal segments and shoot tips

“…It is generally vegetatively propagated through cuttings. It is also used for the synthesis of rosmarinic acid, a pharmaceutically important ester of caffeic acid (Petersen et al 1995). In the preceding years, an ample amount of work was done on Coleus suspension cultures for the production of rosmarinic acid.…”