Abstract
Anthocyanins are widely distributed, glycosylated, water-soluble plant pigments, which give many fruits and flowers their red, purple or blue colouration. Their beneficial effects in a dietary context have encouraged increasing use of anthocyanins as natural colourants in the food and cosmetic industries. However, the limited availability and diversity of anthocyanins commercially have initiated searches for alternative sources of these natural colourants. In plants, high-level production of secondary metabolites, such as anthocyanins, can be achieved by engineering of regulatory genes as well as genes encoding biosynthetic enzymes. We have used tobacco lines which constitutively produce high levels of cyanidin 3-O-rutinoside, delphinidin 3-O-rutinoside or a novel anthocyanin, acylated cyanidin 3-O-(coumaroyl) rutinoside to generate cell suspension cultures. The cell lines are stable in their production rates and superior to conventional plant cell cultures. Scale-up of anthocyanin production in small scale fermenters has been demonstrated. The cell cultures have also proven to be a suitable system for production of 13C-labelled anthocyanins. Our method for anthocyanin production is transferable to other plant species, such as Arabidopsis thaliana, demonstrating the potential of this approach for making a wide range of highly-decorated anthocyanins. The tobacco cell cultures represent a customisable and sustainable alternative to conventional anthocyanin production platforms and have considerable potential for use in industrial and medical applications of anthocyanins.
Highlights
Anthocyanins are a widely distributed group of water-soluble pigments that colour the fruit and flowers of many plants
Samsun plants by constitutive co-expression of the Antirrhinum majus Rosea1 (AmRos1) and Antirrhinum majus Delila (AmDel) transcription factors from Antirrhinum majus (Kallam et al, 2017), Fig. 2a, b)
Extracts of suspension cultures generated from AmDel/AmRos1 plants were analysed by LC-MS and showed accumulation of up to 30 mg cyanidin 3-O-rutinoside (C3R) g−1 dry weight (DW) (Fig. 3d)
Summary
Anthocyanins are a widely distributed group of water-soluble pigments that colour the fruit and flowers of many plants. More than 650 different anthocyanins have been identified, distinguished by methylation, hydroxylation, glycosylation and acylation with both aliphatic and aromatic groups (Andersen and Jordheim, 2010; Zhang et al, 2014). The colour of anthocyanins is influenced by the degree of aromatic acylation, pH, co-pigmentation with other phenolic compounds, metal complexation and can range from orange, through red, pink and purple to blue (Yoshida et al, 2009). Based on the health-promoting effects of anthocyanins and concerns associated with synthetic food. No anthocyanin-based blue colourant is commercially available, and the only source for natural blue colours is phycocyanin from the blue algae, Spirulina (Arthrospira platensis, Sigurdson et al, 2017)
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