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The Use of Nonclassical Techniques in the Production of Secondary Metabolites by Plant Tissue Cultures

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Biotechnology and Pharmacy

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Abstract

Plant tissue culture is considered to be an economically viable means for producing secondary metabolites with a commercial value of over $1,000 per kilo. The major category of such compounds is the pharmaceuticals, where such a compound may constitute the pharmaceutically active agent or a formulation (flavoring or coloring) agent. Although the isolation of these metabolites from cultivated or collected plant material is often the method of choice, there are many cases in which cultivation of the plant is difficult (e.g., Chondodendron tomentosum), or acquisition of the desired metabolites would endanger the species (e.g., Taxus brevifolia) In all such cases tissue culture represents a viable alternative for the production of compounds that are not synthetically accessible. For these reasons, much effort has been devoted to developing plant cell lines to produce such compounds. Ideally plant cell culture systems would be amenable to large–scale fermentation and produce high yields within short periods. In fact, after some 15 years worth of effort there are a number of patents that have been issued describing plant tissue culture systems that yield various compounds1; in general, however, such systems have proven less successful than had been hoped. The major reason for this disappointment seems to be that while it is reasonably easy to generate plant tissue cell lines, a great majority of these cell lines do not produce the sought-after secondary metabolites of their parent plants. To circumvent these problems a number of nonclassical plant tissue techniques have been explored that hold great promise. These nonclassical plant tissue culture techniques include (1) the development of specific production media, (2) the use of biotic or abiotic elicitors, and (3) the direct manipulation of the plant genome, often termed transformation, by the various pathogenic soil bacteria in the genus Agrobacterium Since the production of plant drugs by classical tissue culture techniques have been reviewed previously,2,3 we will turn our attention to the use of these nonclassical techniques as metabolite production systems in plant tissue biotechnology.

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  1. B. O’Keefe
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  2. C. Wm. W. Beecher
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy, College of Pharmacy, University of Illinois at Chicago, 833 South Wood Street, 60612, Chicago, Illinois, USA

    John M. Pezzuto Ph.D. (Professor and Interim Head, Associate Director) (Professor and Interim Head, Associate Director)

  2. Specialized Cancer Center, University of Illinois College of Medicine at Chicago, 833 South Wood Street, 60612, Chicago, Illinois, USA

    John M. Pezzuto Ph.D. (Professor and Interim Head, Associate Director) (Professor and Interim Head, Associate Director)

  3. Center for Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, College of Pharmacy, University of Illinois at Chicago, 833 South Wood Street, 60612, Chicago, Illinois, USA

    Michael E. Johnson Ph.D. (Professor and Interim Director) (Professor and Interim Director)

  4. College of Pharmacy, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1737 West Taylor Street, Suite 203, 60612, Chicago, Illinois, USA

    Henri R. Manasse Jr. Ph.D. (Professor, Interim Vice Chancellor for Health Services) (Professor, Interim Vice Chancellor for Health Services)

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O’Keefe, B., Beecher, C.W.W. (1993). The Use of Nonclassical Techniques in the Production of Secondary Metabolites by Plant Tissue Cultures. In: Pezzuto, J.M., Johnson, M.E., Manasse, H.R. (eds) Biotechnology and Pharmacy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8135-6_12

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