Application of Hairy Root Culture for Bioactive Compounds Production in Medicinal Plants

• Published in: Current pharmaceutical biotechnology
• Main Authors: Li, Caili, Wang, Meizhen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Netherlands 01.01.2021
• Subjects: medicinal plant; hairy root; metabolic engineering; Bioactive compounds; elicitor
• ISSN: 1873-4316
• DOI: 10.2174/1389201021666200516155146

Medicinal plants are rich sources of natural bioactive compounds used to treat many diseases. With the development of the health industry, the market demands for Chinese medicine have increased rapidly in recent years. However, over-utilization of herbal plants would cause serious ecological problems. Therefore, an effective approach should be developed to produce the pharmaceutically important natural drugs. Hairy root culture induced by Agrobacterium rhizogenes has been considered to be an effective tool to produce secondary metabolites that are normally biosynthesized in the roots or even in the aerial organs of mature plants. This review aims to summarize current progress on medicinal plant hairy root culture for bioactive compounds production. It presents the stimulating effects of various biotic and abiotic elicitors on the accumulation of secondary metabolites. Synergetic effects on the production of natural products by a combination of different elicitors or other strategies are also included. The transgenic system has promising prospects to increase bioactive compounds content by introducing their biosynthetic or regulatory genes into medicinal plant hairy root. It offers great potential to further increase secondary metabolites yield by the integration of manipulating pathway genes with elicitors and other strategies. Besides, successful examples of bioactive compounds production by hairy root culture in bioreactor are introduced. At last, advances on two valuable pharmaceuticals production in the hairy root cultures are illustrated in detail.