A non-targeted metabolomics approach to evaluate the effects of biomass growth and chitosan elicitation on primary and secondary metabolism of Hypericum perforatum in vitro roots

Abstract Hypericum perforatum L. is a medicinal plant commonly used worldwide for the treatment of mild and moderate depression due to its wide range of bioactive compounds. H. perforatum regenerated roots have been proposed as an efficacious in vitro system to biosynthesize pharmaceutically useful secondary metabolites. In the present study, a metabolomic platform, which integrates an nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)-based metabolic profiling and analysis of variance-simultaneous component analysis (ASCA), has been applied in order to characterize the changes of the primary and secondary metabolism of H. perforatum regenerated roots induced by an achieved high biomass density in a confined growth environment or in response to chitosan treatment.The ASCA modelling applied to NMR-based metabolic profiling allowed to recognize the effects due to biomass growth rate changes and chitosan treatment. With an high biomass density, associated to a decelerating biomass growth rate, the levels of tryptophan, fructose, shikimic acid, and epicatechin increased, whereas γ-aminobutyric acid and histidine decreased. In response to chitosan elicitation, the biomass growth was arrested and valine, isoleucine, glutamine, γ-aminobutyric acid, fructose, sucrose, polyunsaturated fatty acids, epicatechin, xanthones, dimethylallyl-pyrophosphate, and stigmasterol levels increased, while histidine levels decreased. The metabolic profiling of regenerated ro...
Source: Metabolomics - Category: Biology Source Type: research