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Turkish Journal of Agriculture and Forestry

Abstract

Plant cell fermentation can be a sustainable biotechnological alternative to the wild collection of medicinal plants. As aparadigm, we explored the potential of using the highly endangered endemic tree Cephalotaxus hainanensis, which accumulatescephalotaxine esters—potent anticancer compounds. We successfully established a suspension cell line able to convert cephalotaxineinto its esters, including deoxyharringtonine, harringtonine, isoharringtonine and homoharringtonine at a remarkable maximalconversion rate of up to 86%, when supplemented with L-homoleucine, a precursor for the side chains of these esters. Furthermore, byadding elicitors, we were able to enhance the yield significantly beyond the values expected from the complete conversion of the addedcephalotaxine. In particular, the addition of silver nitrate allowed the production of up to 19 mg/L of deoxyharringtonine and 3.3 mg/L ofcephalotaxine, more than doubling the expected yield from the complete conversion of the fed precursor (10 mg/L cephalotaxine). Thus,these treatments not only promoted the bioconversion of exogenous cephalotaxine but also stimulated the biosynthesis of endogenouscephalotaxine. This stimulation required more than 5 days to become manifest. This is the first case where deoxyharringtonine couldbe produced by plant cell culture, paving the way for the commercial production of this valuable pharmaceutical compound whilesafeguarding the highly endangered and endemic population of the tree itself.

Author ORCID Identifier

LIANG WANG: 0000-0002-9624-942X

MUHAMMAD ZAFAR: 0000-0002-5664-138X

CHONGYU WU: 0009-0004-7011-8490

ZHIQIANG XIONG: 0000-0001-7585-0040

JINGYI SUN: 0009-0008-3633-0366

HUAPENG SUN: 0000-0001-9797-0510

HANQING CONG: 0000-0001-5167-015X

XUEFEI JIANG: 0000-0002-0607-3847

MAHMOUD SELEIMAN: 0000-0003-4779-9414

FEI QIAO: 0000-0002-5515-1792

PETER NICK: 0000-0002-0763-4175

DOI

10.55730/1300-011X.3337

Keywords

Antitumor alkaloid, Cephalotaxus hainanensis, deoxyharringtonine, silver nitrate, suspension-cultured cells

First Page

116

Last Page

126

Publisher

The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TÜBİTAK)

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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