Enhanced artemisinin accumulation and metabolic profiling of transgenic Artemisia annua L. plants over-expressing by rate-limiting enzymes from isoprenoid pathway

摘要

Artemisinin, a natural product isolated from aerial parts of Artemisia annua L. plant, is a potent antimalarial drug against drug-resistant malaria. In recent times, the demand (101–119 MT) for artemisinin is exponentially increasing with the increased incidence of drug-resistant malaria throughout the world, especially African and Asian continents. However, the commercial production of artemisinin-based combination therapies has limitation because of the presence of low concentration of artemisinin in plants. Therefore, transgenic lines of A. annua L. plants over-expressing both HMG-Co A reductase (hmgr) and amorpha-4, 11-diene synthase (ads) genes were developed to enhance the content of artemisinin. The selected transgenic lines (TR4, TR5, and TR7) were found to accumulate higher artemisinin (0.97–1.2) as compared to the non-transgenic plants (0.63). The secondary metabolite profiles of these lines were also investigated employing gas chromatography mass spectrometry, which revealed a clear differenc...