Phytoactive compounds from in vitro derived tissues

Abstract

Plants are valuable sources for the discovery of new products of medicinal importance. Several distinct chemicals and compounds derived from plants are being used as important drugs all around the world. The evolving commercial importance of secondary metabolites in recent years resulted in a great interest in secondary metabolism, particularly in the possibility of altering the production of bioactive plant metabolites by means of plant tissue culture technology. Plant tissue culture techniques are found to have potential as a supplement to traditional agriculture in industrial production of bioactive compounds which is an alternative to produce the desirable medicinal compounds from plants. Phytoactive compounds have been isolated from a number of plants cultured in vitro mainly from callus cultures viz. Cardiospermum halicacabum, Cassia fistula, Pisum sativum, Centella asiatica. Some of those compounds are of great medicinal value and are used in recovery of fatal diseases like cancer such as Ajmalicine and Taxol. Discoveries of cell cultures capable of producing specific medicinal compounds have accelerated in the last few years viz. Datura metel, Catharanthus roseus, Chlorophytum borivilianum, Bacopa monieri. Some of the medicinal compounds localized in morphologically specialized tissues or organs of native plants have been produced in culture systems not only by inducing specific organized cultures, but also by undifferentiated cell cultures. Due to these advances, researches in the area of tissue culture technology for the production of plant chemicals have bloomed beyond expectations.