Authors
Abdur Rahim, Md Shakil Rahman Shoagh, Anika Tasnim Khan Mim, Rifah Tasnia, Md Sulaiman Ali, Baishakhi Roy, Md Badrul Islam, Mohammad Saiful Islam, Amit Kumar Dutta, Rezaul Karim, M Nasiruddin
Published in
Physiology and molecular biology of plants : an international journal of functional plant biology. Volume 32. Issue 10. Pages 2273-2288. Epub Sep 06, 2026.
Abstract
Catharanthus roseus is the sole natural source of the anticancer bisindole alkaloids vinblastine and vincristine, but leaf yields are intrinsically low. This study evaluated whether targeted in vitro and in vivo elicitation could enhance alkaloid accumulation and whether these changes were associated with selected physiological stress markers and with responses of terpenoid indole alkaloid-related transcripts. Microplants and calli were cultured on Murashige-Skoog medium; pot-grown plants received sodium chloride (NaCl), salicylic acid (10⁻⁵ M), methyl jasmonate (MeJA; 500 µM), ultraviolet-B (UV-B), or MeJA plus UV-B under controlled pot-culture conditions. Vinblastine and vincristine were quantified by high-performance liquid chromatography; hydrogen peroxide, electrolyte leakage, proline, ascorbate, and chlorophyll were assayed; and transcript levels of strictosidine synthase (CrSTR), tryptophan decarboxylase (CrTDC), and deacetylvindoline O-acetyltransferase (CrDAT) were measured by quantitative reverse-transcription PCR. Elicitation significantly altered alkaloid accumulation (p < 0.001): callus formation/NaCl treatment 8 (CFNT8) reached 11.44 µg g⁻¹ dry weight (DW) vinblastine and 23.35 µg g⁻¹ DW vincristine. In the selected follow-up subset, high-alkaloid treatments were associated with higher hydrogen peroxide (2.41 µmol g⁻¹), electrolyte leakage (0.44 µS cm⁻¹ g⁻¹), proline (96 µg g⁻¹), and ascorbate (26.14 mg g⁻¹), lower chlorophyll, and increased CrSTR (14.3-fold), CrTDC (5.1-fold), and CrDAT (24.1-fold) transcript abundance. Exploratory principal component analysis explained 88.85% of the variance and indicated clustering of stress/antioxidant, transcript, and alkaloid traits. Because this analysis used a limited targeted subset, these patterns are interpreted as hypothesis-generating. The findings identify CFNT8 and selected UV-B/MeJA-responsive treatments as useful conditions for future validation of elicitation timing in C. roseus.
The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s12298-026-01802-7.
PMID:
42892928
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 18 Oct 2026.
Read full publication at:
Please sign in
to see all details.
Advertisement
Stats
- Recommendations n/a n/a positive of 0 vote(s)
- Views 8
- Comments 0