Influence of hairy root ecotypes on production of tropane alkaloids in Brugmansia candida

Abstract

Hyoscyamine and scopolamine are tropane alkaloids widely applied in medicine. Differences in alkaloids production and growth kinetics were observed for Argentinean and Colombian ecotypes of Brugmansia candida hairy roots. The aim of this work was to analyze the production of key intermediates in both ecotypes in order to determine differences in the biosynthetic pathway of tropane alkaloids. Additionally, rolC gene expression was analyzed to determine its correlation with hairy root growth. The results showed a higher accumulation of polyamines in Colombian hairy roots suggesting that there may be a rate limiting enzyme in the last steps of the hyoscyamine biosynthesis. Additionally, rolC gene expression was correlated with an improvement hairy root growth supporting the involvement of rol genes as growth modulators and suggesting that metabolic engineering approaches by rolC manipulation may be useful for the development of more efficient B. candida hairy root cultures for biotechnological applications.