Planta Med 2012; 78 - PB10
DOI: 10.1055/s-0032-1320339

Improvement of tropane alkaloids production in transgenic Anisodus Acutangulus by genetic engineering

L Cui 1, 2, Y Guo 1, 2, A Zhang 1, 2, G Kai 1, 2
  • 1Center of Plant Resourec Research and Development, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai 200234, China
  • 2Laboratory of Plant Biotechnology, College of Life and Environment Sciences, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai 200234, China

Tropane alkaloids (TA) including hyoscyamine, anisodamine, scopolamine and anisodine, are used medicinally as anticholinergic agents with increasing market demand, so it is very important to improve TA production by metabolic engineering strategy. Here, we report the simultaneous introduction of genes encoding the branch-controlling enzyme tropinone reductase I (TRI, EU424321) and the downstream rate-limiting enzyme hyoscyamine-6β-ydroxylase (H6H, EF187826) involved in TA biosynthesis into Anisodus acutangulus hairy roots by Agrobacterium-mediated gene transfer technology. Transgenic hairy root lines expressing both TRI and H6H (TH lines) produced significantly higher (P<0.05) levels of TA compared with the control and single gene transformed lines (T or H lines). The best double gene transformed line (TH53) produced 4.293mg/g TA, which was about 4.49-fold higher than that of the control lines (0.96mg/g). As far as it is known, this is the first report on simultaneous introduction of TRI and H6H genes into TA-producing plant by biotechnological approaches.