Identification, Biological Activities and Biosynthetic Pathway of Dendrobium Alkaloids.

Suiyun Chen,Fei Ye,Yi Zhao,Yana Shi,Edward J. Kennelly,Zongmin Mou,Dake Zhao

doi:10.3389/fphar.2021.605994

Abstract

Dendrobium is a genus of flowering plants belonging to the Orchidaceae family with more than 1,400 species. Many Dendrobium species have been used as medicinal plants in several Asian countries for thousands of years. Alkaloids were reported as the major biological markers due to their complex chemical compositions and various types. In this review, we summarized the structural types of alkaloids, their pharmacological activities, as well as the mechanisms of biological activities. More than sixty alkaloids were isolated and identified from the Dendrobium genus. Moreover, the pharmacological effects of Dendrobium alkaloids as hepatic lipid and gluconeogenesis regulation, as neuroprotection, and as anti-tumor, anti-inflammatory, anti-diabetes, and anti-virus factors were described. Besides, the total chemical synthesis of dendrobine is provided, while the biosynthetic pathway of dendrobine has been proposed based on the functions of associated genes. For applications of these invaluable herbs, more researches on the extraction of biological markers from compounds are needed. Further confirmation of the proposed biosynthetic pathways is anticipated as well.

Highlights

Apart from Asteraceae, the orchid family is the second-largest flowering family, which has 28,000 species distributed in about 736 genera (Chase et al, 2015), among which Dendrobium is one of the largest genera
In the MEP pathway, rate-determining genes 1-deoxy-D-xylulose-5-phosphate synthase (DXS) and 1-deoxyD-xylulose-5-phosphate reductoisomerase (DXR) isolated from protocorms of Dendrobium officinale Kimura et Migo were largely up-regulated by the methyl jasmonate (MeJA) treatment, suggesting their significant roles in the sesquiterpene biosynthesis based on the analysis of KEGG enrichment and relative expression (Fan et al, 2016; Chen et al, 2019)
59 full-length Cytochromes P450s (CYP450s) candidate genes involved in the dendrobine (20) biosynthesis were identified and characterized in Dendrobium officinale Kimura et Migo through tissue-specific transcriptomic analysis, phylogenetic analysis, and further gene expression pattern induced by MeJA treatment (Chen et al, 2019)

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Apart from Asteraceae, the orchid family is the second-largest flowering family, which has 28,000 species distributed in about 736 genera (Chase et al, 2015), among which Dendrobium is one of the largest genera. It contains more than 1,500 species (www.theplantlist.org), most of which are epiphytic or lithophytic, and it is widespread in South, East, and Southeast Asia, like China, Japan, Philippines, Vietnam, India, and Indonesia. The plants of Dendrobium species have been used as traditional or folk medicine in many Asian countries for thousands of years.

Dendrobine standard

Findings

CONCLUSION