Sarracenia purpurea L. belongs to the carnivorous plants, which remain interesting as the ornamental plants, but what is more important they possess many valuable compounds. S. purpurea L. is well known as Cree medicinal plant (Cieniak et al., 2015). The plants from Sarracenia genus were found to possess antioxidant, antidiabetic, antiviral and antibacterial constituents (Kannan et al., 2020; Muhammad et al., 2013, Cieniak et al., 2015), among them sarracenin (Hu et al., 2009), betulinic acid, ursolic acid (Cieniak et al., 2015), hyperoside (quercetin-3-O-galactoside), morroniside (Harris et al., 2012) and many others were detected and confirmed (Table 1).
Table 1
Potential bioactive properties of compounds found in plants of the Sarracenia genus.
Lp | Effect | Compound | Reference |
1. | Analgesic therapy | Sarapin | (Harris et al., 2012; Campos et al., 2013) |
2. | Anticancer properties | Betulinic acid Betulinaldehyde Ursolic acid Plumagin Ramentaceon Quercetin | (Miles et al., 1974) |
3. | Antidiabetic properties (T2D) | Quercetin Morroniside Quercetin-3-O-glucoside Rutin | (Harris et al., 2010; Harris et al. 2012) |
4. | Antiglycation activity | Catechin Myricetin Quercetin-3-O-galactoside Rutin | (Beaulieu et al., 2009; Harris et al. 2010, Harris et al. 2012) |
5. | Antimycobacterial properties (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) | Betulinic acid, Ursolic acid | (Moerman, 1998; Morrison et al., 2016) |
6. | Antipoxivirus properties (monkeypox- MPXV, poxvirus bovis- VACV, variola virus- VARV) | Quercetin | (Arndt et al, 2012; Miles, 1862) |
7. | Dyspepsia and constipation (laxative properties) | Betulinic acid Ursolic acid | (Arndt et al, 2012) |
8. | Gynecological disorders | Betulinic acid | (Harris et al, 2012) |
9. | Neurodegenerative diseases (mainly: Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease) | Luteolin | (Cieniak et al, 2015) |
10.. | Stimulated AMPK signaling pathway | Quercetin-3-glucoside Quercetin-3-O-galactoside Rutin | (Eid et al. 2010; Nachare at al. 2013) |
Because hairy roots cultures are promising method for the production of interesting secondary metabolites in plants (Tian, 2015) and these cultures can be applied for enhanced synthesis of bioactive compounds, the aim of this study was to establish the tissue culture of Sarracenia purpurea L. plants and transformation of them via agroinfection method with Agrobacterium rhizogenes strain.
It should be pointed out that hairy roots cultures are characterized by high genetic stability and high growth rate without addition of any plant growth regulators (Shakeran et al., 2017, Rana et al., 2017). Thus these cultures can be considered as the tool for plant physiology and interaction analysis i.e. allelopathy (Stanišić et al., 2019) or for the production of medical compounds i.e. heterologous proteins. In this case human tissue-plasminogen activator was produced in hairy roots of oriental melon (Cucumis melo L.) (Kim et al., 2012) or human gastric lipase in Arabidopsis hairy roots (Guerineau et al., 2020). The level of produced metabolites in hairy root cultures is also often higher than in mother plant or root, for example it was exhibited that for hairy root cultures of Isatis tinctoria L. total flavonoids content in 24-day-old cultures was about 30% higher than in 2-year-old roots, derived from field cultivation (Gai et al., 2015).
Additionally, the elicitation of the hairy root cultures can enhance the production of interesting compounds (Shakeran et al., 2017), the second strategy may be genetic transformation of A. rhizogenes with desired genes. However, as it was shown genetic transformation with application of this bacterium strain can cause reduction in the effectiveness of hairy root formation in plants (Rana et al., 2017). It should be also pointed out that many plant species, which remain recalcitrant to A. tumefaciens infection and transformation, were successfully transformed with A. rhizogenes. Among them it can be distinguished Salix spp. L. (Gomes et al., 2019), Prunus spp. (Bosselut et al., 2011), Populus spp. (Yoshida et al., 2015) and many others. Thus A. rhizogenes is noticed as very effective biotechnological tool of genetic engineering.
In present study wild-type strain of A. rhizogenes was used for hairy root induction in Sarracenia plants. A. rhizogenes (syn. Rhizobium rhizogenes) is Gram-negative bacterium, which infects plants and transfers the fragment of Ri plasmid. The transfer and integration of its T-DNA (containing genes encoding enzymes necessary for auxin and cytokinin synthesis) to plant genome causes the growth of hairy roots (Rana et al., 2017).
To our best knowledge this is the first report concerning transformation of plants from Sarracenia genus with Agrobacterium rhizogenes strain.