Open AccessHairy root cultures: A suitable biological system for studying secondary metabolic pathways in plants
Author(s) -
Sharma Poojadevi,
Padh Harish,
Shrivastava Neeta
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
engineering in life sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.547
H-Index - 57
eISSN - 1618-2863
pISSN - 1618-0240
DOI - 10.1002/elsc.201200030
Subject(s) - agrobacterium , hairy root culture , biology , metabolic pathway , secondary metabolism , botany , plant roots , metabolic engineering , computational biology , biochemistry , transformation (genetics) , biosynthesis , enzyme , gene
Hairy roots, a plant disease caused by Agrobacterium rhizogenes , show distinctive features such as high growth rate, unlimited branching, and biochemical and genetic stability. Hairy roots resemble normal roots in terms of differentiated morphology and biosynthetic machinery, producing similar secondary metabolites compared to wild‐type roots. As a result, hairy roots have been a topic of intense research for the past three decades, fueling innumerable attempts to develop in vitro hairy root cultures for a large number of plants for the commercial‐scale production of secondary metabolites. The same characteristics have now led to further applications, such as using hairy root cultures as experimental systems for secondary metabolic pathway elucidation studies. Although the trend is relatively new, it has already gained momentum. This review summarizes these developments. The following discussion focuses on the rationale and advantages of using hairy root cultures for secondary metabolic pathway elucidation studies, the methods used, and the results that have been obtained so far.