Hairy root culture: An alternative terpenoid expression platform

Abstract

A fantastic source of natural products encompassing the vast group of the terpenes, alkaloids, and phenolic compounds is provided by the plants. About 25,000 of these secondary metabolites hold a strong potential in a large domain of industrial and pharmaceutical applications. Plant families, such as Lamiaceae, Asteraceae, and Taxaceae, synthesize several terpenoid classes with a great economic value. Hairy roots, resulting from Agrobacterium rhizogenes–mediated transformation of plant cells, can be harnessed for terpenoid production on a large scale. A. rhizogenes over other transformation systems makes possible an easy regeneration of transgenic plants. Based on the deletion of rol genes located on the wild-type Ri-T-DNA, disarmed versions are created in order to overcome abnormalities of Ri-plants. Terpenoid accumulation from hairy roots can be optimized by elicitation treatment with jasmonates. Ri-T-DNA activation tagging system and transcriptome analyses are powerful tools to isolate new function genes involved in the terpenoid biosynthesis. Such genes encoding enzymes involved in the secondary metabolism can be inserted between the T-DNA borders. Lastly, some pharmacological properties of these plant terpenes/terpenoids involved in the therapy of more or less severe pathologies are reported.