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Mass Scale Hairy Root Cultivation of Catharanthus roseus in Bioreactor for Indole Alkaloid Production

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Plant Cell and Tissue Differentiation and Secondary Metabolites

Part of the book series: Reference Series in Phytochemistry ((RSP))

Abstract

Catharanthus roseus also known as Vinca roseus has long been cultivated for herbal medicine as well as an ornamental plant. It produces important alkaloids (Vinblastine, vincristine, ajmalicine, catharanthine, and serpentine) which have medicinal properties. There is a great demand of these alkaloids but their prices are high and the content in naturally occurring plant is low. Vincristine and vinblastine are either totally absent or are present in trace amounts in undifferentiated cultures like callus or suspension cultures. However, the hairy root cultures, especially the transformed roots, are considered to be an important source of these valuable compounds. Hairy root is a plant disease caused by Agrobacterium rhizogenes. When the bacterium infects the plant, the T-DNA between TR and TL regions is of the Ri plasmid in the bacterium is transferred and integrated into the nuclear genome of the host plant. This results in the formation of hairy roots. These are a valuable source of secondary metabolites that are useful as pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and food additives. Hairy roots can produce more than a single metabolite and hence can be used for commercial production of the important secondary metabolites. Scale-up in bioreactors is a key step toward making the production of the secondary metabolites commercially viable. However, several changes have to be made in the conventional microbial reactor designs due to its different morphology and three dimensional growth characteristics. The present communication focuses on major aspects of the bioreactor design particularly for large-scale production of Indole alkaloids of Catharanthus roseus.

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Abbreviations

DO:

Dissolved oxygen

OUR:

Oxygen uptake rate

PEP:

Phosphoenolpyruvate

PEPCase:

Phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase

Ri:

Root inducing

T-DNA:

Transfer DNA

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biochemical Engineering & Biotechnology, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, India

    Dhara Thakore & Ashok Kumar Srivastava

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  1. Dhara Thakore
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  2. Ashok Kumar Srivastava
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Correspondence to Ashok Kumar Srivastava .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Botany, M.L.Sukhadia university, Udaipur, Rajasthan, India

    Kishan Gopal Ramawat

  2. Department of Pharmaceutical Botany, Jagiellonian University, Medical College, Kraków, Poland

    Halina Maria Ekiert

  3. Amarillo, TX, USA

    Shaily Goyal

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Thakore, D., Srivastava, A.K. (2020). Mass Scale Hairy Root Cultivation of Catharanthus roseus in Bioreactor for Indole Alkaloid Production. In: Ramawat, K., Ekiert, H., Goyal, S. (eds) Plant Cell and Tissue Differentiation and Secondary Metabolites. Reference Series in Phytochemistry. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11253-0_21-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11253-0_21-1

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