Pratibha Chaturvedi, Sandeepan Mukherjee, Shraddha Mehta, Pialy Chatterjee and Abhay Chowdhary
Plant cell culture system has served as an alternative to enhance the production of high value phyto-pharmaceuticals. In the described study, the immobilized culture and static culture of Curcuma longa (Zingiberaceae) were used to maximize the production of the bioactive compound Curcumin. It was observed that Curcumin content in vitro studies (static as well as immobilize cultures) were enhanced in one week old cultures fed with 5 mg/100 ml of media (Static 8.71%; immobilize 2.03%). Statistically significant (seven fold) enhancement in Curcumin content was obtained in one week old static culture, which was maintained on Zenk production media incorporated with cinnamic acid (Control 1.57% and induced 8.717%). Quantitative estimation was done using HPTLC analysis with standard Curcumin. To evaluate the effect of treatment on total protein in Curcumin biosynthesis, we have examined Curcumin content as well as the protein profile of treated samples of Curcuma longa static culture. All the treated samples were analysed using SDS-PAGE for their proteomic profiles. A 23,420 Da protein was prominently expressed in all samples which may be a glycine rich protein (works on defence mechanism). Treated samples exhibited decreased expression of the protein as compared to control. This may be attributed to the formation of Reactive Oxygen species (ROS) in culture condition due to high concentration of sucrose (5%) in the Curcuma longa culture media that is known to induce oxidative stress and subsequent increase in Curcumin production. Further investigation is required to understand the actual protein involvement in Curcumin synthesis in different cultures treated with different compounds. The study signifies the use of plant explants to develop immobilized and static cultures rather than callus in Zenk media, which reduce the time as well as expenditure. The proteomic profile of C. longa has been discussed earlier, but its effect on proteomic profile of in vitro treated samples is a new study.