Abstract
Hairy roots derived from the infection of a plant by Rhizobium rhizogenes (previously referred to as Agrobacterium rhizogenes) bacteria, can be obtained from a wide variety of plants and allow the production of highly diverse molecules. Hairy roots are able to produce and secrete complex active glycoproteins from a large spectrum of organisms. They are also adequate to express plant natural biosynthesis pathways required to produce specialized metabolites and can benefit from the new genetic tools available to facilitate an optimized production of tailor-made molecules. This adaptability has positioned hairy root platforms as major biotechnological tools. Researchers and industries have contributed to their advancement, which represents new alternatives from classical systems to produce complex molecules. Now these expression systems are ready to be used by different industries like pharmaceutical, cosmetics, and food sectors due to the development of fully controlled large-scale bioreactors. This review aims to describe the evolution of hairy root generation and culture methods and to highlight the possibilities offered by hairy roots in terms of feasibility and perspectives.
Highlights
Between the 1930s and the 1960s, hairy roots (HRs) were studied primarily as a sign of pathogen invasion in horticultural plants (Doran, 2013)
When the goal is to produce recombinant proteins, this bacteria have to be first genetically engineered, so as to portray the genes of interest to be later expressed by the HRs
The products being expressed by HRs can correspond to specialized metabolites, naturally produced by the plant, or recombinant, heterologous proteins
Summary
Between the 1930s and the 1960s, hairy roots (HRs) were studied primarily as a sign of pathogen invasion in horticultural plants (Doran, 2013). The rolB gene of R. rhizogenes is involved in the activation of the transcription factors of most specialized metabolites in HRCs as well as on the expression of chaperone-type proteins (Bulgakov et al, 2016; Bulgakov et al, 2018).
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