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Increase in rosmarinic acid accumulation and transcriptional responses of synthetic genes in hairy root cultures of Prunella vulgaris induced by methyl jasmonate

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Abstract

The induction of hairy root cultures is a useful platform with many merits, making it an attractive system for plant biochemistry and molecular biology. To examine whether methyl jasmonate (MeJA) is related to a signal transduction pathway resulting in the elucidation of rosmarinic acid (RA) synthesis in Prunella vulgaris, we treated the hairy roots with MeJA and determined the accumulation of RA, total phenolics (TP), and total flavonoids (TF). We found that 100 μM MeJA exhibited the optimum induction efficiency. Therefore, the time course characterization of hairy root culture with 100 μM MeJA was performed to evaluate the exposure performance over eight days. During that period, RA was 1.7 times the maximum accumulations 5 days after the addition of MeJA, TP and TF were 2.0 times and 2.4 times higher than that of the untreated hairy roots, respectively. We checked the expression levels of genes transcripts associated with RA synthetic pathway as well. Correlation analysis showed that RA accumulation is significantly correlated with the transcripts expression of PvHPPR, PvPAL, PvC4H, Pv4CL1, Pv4CL2, and PvCYP98A101, while it did not reach a prominent relationship with transcripts of PvTAT and PvRAS. Taken together, the results of our study suggest that MeJA can be used as an efficient elucidation for the future scale-up of hairy root cultures of P. vulgaris for the yield of RA in a bioreactor system.

Key message

Methyl jasmonate with 100 μM presented the optimum induction efficiency in the production of rosmarinic acid, total flavonoids, and total phenolics in hairy roots of Prunella vulgaris.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Guangxi for Youth Fund Project (No. 2018GXNSFBA050061), the Science & Technology and Special Talents Project of Guangxi (No. Guike AD19245087), and the Key project at central government level: The ability to establish sustainable use of valuable Chinese medicine resources (2060302).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Pharmacy, Guangxi University of Chinese Medicine, Nanning, 530200, People’s Republic of China

    Mei Ru, Yonghua Li, Min Guo, Liuyan Chen & Yong Tan

  2. College of Pharmacy, Shaanxi University of Chinese Medicine, Xi’an, 710000, People’s Republic of China

    Liang Peng

  3. College of Life Sciences and Medicine, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou, 310000, People’s Republic of China

    Zongsuo Liang

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  1. Mei Ru
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Contributions

RM, LYH, GM, PL, and LZS conceived and designed research. RM, and PL conducted experiments. RM, LYH, and GM analysed data. RM, PL, and LZS wrote the manuscript. RM, PL, CLY, and TY revised the manuscript. All authors have read and approved the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Liang Peng or Zongsuo Liang.

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Communicated by K.X. Tang.

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Ru, M., Li, Y., Guo, M. et al. Increase in rosmarinic acid accumulation and transcriptional responses of synthetic genes in hairy root cultures of Prunella vulgaris induced by methyl jasmonate. Plant Cell Tiss Organ Cult 149, 371–379 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11240-022-02273-w

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