Abstract
Polyploidy plays an important role in plant diversification and speciation. The ploidy level of plants is associated with morphological and biochemical characteristics, and its modification has been used as a strategy to alter the quantitative and qualitative patterns of secondary metabolite production in different medicinal plants. Polyploidization can be induced by many anti-mitotic agents, among which colchicine, oryzalin, and trifluralin are the most common. Other variables involved in the induction process include the culture media, explant types, and exposure times. Due to the effects of polyploidization on plant growth and development, chromosome doubling has been applied in plant breeding to increase the levels of target compounds and improve morphological characteristics. Prompted by the importance of herbal medicines and the increasing demand for drugs based on plant secondary metabolites, this review presents an overview of how polyploidy can be used to enhance metabolite production in medicinal plants.
Highlights
This review discusses polyploidy as an approach to enhancing secondary metabolite production, with a focus on induction methods and their application in medicinal plants
The expression levels of some key genes involved in the podophyllotoxin biosynthetic pathway, including those encoding phenylalanine ammonia-lyase (PAL), cinnamoyl-CoA reductase (CCR), cinnamyl-alcohol dehydrogenase (CAD), and pinoresinol-lariciresinol reductase (PLR), were enhanced by increasing the plant ploidy [54]
Polyploidy is a common phenomenon in plants
Summary
As an essential part of our daily diet, plants play a central role in human health. In addition to their nutritional value, plants have been intensively studied for their bioactive compounds [1]. In addition to the central importance of natural products as sources of pharmaceutical agents and their direct use as drugs, they can be used as chemical models for the design and synthesis of new drug substances Despite their significance, only a limited number of medicinal plants are cultivated, most of which are collected from the wild. In agronomic research and development, many biotechnological strategies have been tested to enhance the production of secondary metabolites in medicinal plants, including screening for high-yielding cell lines, modification of culture media, precursor feeding, elicitation, hairy root culture, plant cell immobilization, and biotransformation [8,9]. To date, few plant cell factories have been successfully established to produce high-value secondary metabolites at industrial levels These include cell suspension cultures of Lithospermum erythrorhizon, which is used for the production of shikonin, and Coptis japonica, which produces berberine [16]. This review discusses polyploidy as an approach to enhancing secondary metabolite production, with a focus on induction methods and their application in medicinal plants
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