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Bioactive metabolite production and stress-related hormones in Devil’s claw cell suspension cultures grown in bioreactors

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Abstract

In a previous report, we showed that cell cultures of Harpagophytum procumbens, a South African plant with high medicinal value, accumulate high amounts of anti-inflammatory phenylethanoid glycosides during cultivation in shake-flasks. The aim of the present study was to transfer the phenylethanoid biosynthetic process to a 3-L stirred tank reactor and a 1-L glass-column bioreactor (operated with pulsed aeration). We found that, with stepwise increases in aeration, the stirred tank reactor yielded similar productivities of verbascoside (the major phenylethanoid glycoside in the cells) to those reported for shake-flask cultures (55.68 vs. 54.78 mg verbascoside/L/day, respectively). Transfer in the pulse-aerated column reactor resulted in 165.42 mg verbascoside/L/day, one of the highest yields reported to date. Further, to evaluate the physiological status of the suspended cells in the bioreactors cultures, we examined their hormone levels and compared them to those of cells in shake-flask cultures. While indole-3-acetic acid levels did not differ significantly between the bioreactor and shake-flask cultures, there were considerable differences in their levels of abscisic, jasmonic, and salicylic acids. These results are discussed with respect to relative stress levels in the different cultivation systems.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a grant from the National Science Fund of Bulgaria (contract number DO-02-261/2008). M.G. was supported by a short-term fellowship of the Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture (SWMK). The authors express their thanks to Dr. G. Kerns (SIAB, Leipzig, Germany) for kindly supplying the H. procumbens callus culture. We would also like to thank Dr. V. Georgiev (Institute of Microbiology, Plovdiv, Bulgaria) for his help with adjusting the glass-column bioreactor and Silvia Heinze (Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany) for technical assistance.

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Correspondence to Milen Georgiev.

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Milen Georgiev and Jutta Ludwig-Müller contributed equally to this work

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Georgiev, M., Ludwig-Müller, J., Weber, J. et al. Bioactive metabolite production and stress-related hormones in Devil’s claw cell suspension cultures grown in bioreactors. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 89, 1683–1691 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-010-3008-2

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