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Hairy roots of ‘dashmula’ plant Uraria picta as a promising alternative to its medicinally valued true roots - functional and metabolomic analysis

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Abstract

Uraria picta is a medicinally important ‘dashmula’ plant found in dry grasslands of India and is facing overexploitation in wilds. Its roots have been used in traditional treatments while in modern medicine it is known to promote osteogenesis and possess anti-cancer properties. Rhizobium rhizogenes ATCC-15834 was used to induce hairy roots (HR) in in vitro raised U. picta seedlings. This is the first report of U. picta HR induction and characterization. The comparative biochemical and functional analysis showed that U. picta true roots (TR) and HR extracts display high free radical scavenging activity (~ 84%) and higher cytotoxic activity in cancer cell lines HeLa (71.18%) and MCF-7 (89.36%) as compared to the normal cell line HEK (58.87%). There was a twofold increase in HR biomass upon jasmonic acid (JA) treatment, while salicylic acid (SA) and abscisic acid (ABA) had no significant effects, though ABA led to increase in the HR thickness. In comparative metabolomics HR-LC/MS study, 39% metabolites were commonly detected in TR, HR and Hairy root exudates (HREx). Major chemical classes of the metabolites detected were lipids, benzenoids and organic acids represented by glutinone; estra-1,3,5(10)-triene-3,6 beta, 17 beta-triol triacetate; azokisaponin III; gingerol, shogaol and mucronine B with well-known therapeutic potentials. Additionally, a high proportion of unknown masses were also found in U. picta TR, HR and HREx, which needs further investigation. Due to the parallels in the biochemical, metabolomic and functional aspects of TR and HR, U. picta HR represents a sustainable alternative source of U. picta bioactives.

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Key message

Comparative metabolomics reveals similarities in the hairy roots and true roots of Uraria picta, making it a suitable biotechnological alternative for biosynthesis of specialized metabolites.

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Abbreviations

TR:

True roots

HR:

Hairy roots

HREx:

Hairy root exudates

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Acknowledgements

The contribution of Mr. Bhanudas Chavhan for providing the plant tissue and seeds needed for the experiments and Dr. Gauri Abhyankar for guiding us on hairy root cultures. The authors would like to thank Dr. Sumita Jha, Dr. Pijush Paul from University of Calcutta, India for kindly providing us with some R. rhizogenes strains and guiding about its culture and Dr. Bhushan Patwardhan, Dr. Uma Chandran from Department of Health Sciences, SPPU, Pune, India for their thoughtful insights.

Funding

This work was supported by the BioCARe project, Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India to VAT and UPE-II (Biotechnology and Biodiversity) project, Institute of Bioinformatics and Biotechnology (IBB), Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU), Pune, Maharashtra, India. The funding was provided by Department of Biotechnology , Ministry of Science and Technology (Grant No. BT/BioCARe/07/320/2012).

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  1. Institute of Bioinformatics and Biotechnology (IBB), Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU), Ganeshkhind Road, Pune, Maharashtra, 411 007, India

    Supriya K. Acharya, Gokul V. Hedda, Anuj J. Kankariya & Vaijayanti A. Tamhane

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  1. Supriya K. Acharya
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  2. Gokul V. Hedda
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Correspondence to Vaijayanti A. Tamhane.

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Communicated by Amita Bhattacharya.

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Supplementary file1 (DOCX 210 KB)

11240_2021_2024_MOESM2_ESM.pptx

Supplementary file2 (PPTX 865 KB) Supplementary figure S1: Analysis of the differentially expressed metabolites in U. picta true roots (TR), hairy roots (HR) and hairy root exudates (HREx) a VIP score plot, b Heat map of Top 50 differentially expressed metabolites ranked with respect to their relative abundance, p value and fold change of metabolites of differential metabolites identified in all three groups. In the color scale of abundance, red indicates high while blue indicates low relative concentrations of the metabolites.

11240_2021_2024_MOESM3_ESM.pptx

Supplementary file3 (PPTX 518 KB) Supplementary figure S2: Pathway analysis by Metaboanalyst 4.2 tool. a commonly identified metabolites belonged to highly significant pathways like one carbon pool by folate, arachidonic acid metabolism, pantothenate and CoA biosynthesis pathways. b differential metabolites belonged to Phenylalanine, tyrosine and tryptophan biosynthesis, tryptophan and biotin metabolism.

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Acharya, S., Hedda, G.V., Kankariya, A.J. et al. Hairy roots of ‘dashmula’ plant Uraria picta as a promising alternative to its medicinally valued true roots - functional and metabolomic analysis. Plant Cell Tiss Organ Cult 145, 533–544 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11240-021-02024-3

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