Effect of abiotic elicitation and pathway precursors feeding over terpenoid indole alkaloids production in multiple shoot and callus cultures of Catharanthus roseus

Catharanthus roseus is a well-known herb with great pharmaceutical value for being the only source of natural antineoplastic drugs vinblastine and vincristine. The terpenoid indole alkaloids (TIAs) biosynthetic pathway responsible for the production of these antineoplastic drug molecules is under a strict spatiotemporal regulation that requires five different cellular as well as at least four intracellular compartmentations for its completion. Therefore, several efforts were made to investigate the cell and tissue cultures of Catharanthus roseus to establish as an alternative source of TIAs production. Cell suspension, hairy roots and callus cultures of Catharanthus roseus do not provide the required cellular complexity for the completion of entire TIAs pathway, therefore, failed to produce vinblastine and vincristine. However, the multiple shoot cultures do provide the required cellular complexity to complete the entire TIAs pathway. Therefore, in the present study, the multiple shoot cultures along with callus cultures were subjected to the abiotic elicitors and TIAs pathway precursors feeding for the first time to chase the effect of these abiotic elicitors and pathway precursors on the production of major TIAs of Catharanthus roseus. The multiple shoot cultures treated with TIAs pathway precursor tryptamine 300 mg/L accumulated highest vinblastine content (0.0277% dry wt) followed by tryptophan feeding at 300 mg/L (0.0180% dry wt) and 500 mg/L (0.0175% dry wt) whereas, callus cultures failed to produce vinblastine.