Induced genetic and chemical changes in medicinally important plant Catharanthus roseus (L.) G. Don: cold plasma and phytohormones.

BACKGROUND: Catharanthus roseus (L.) G. Donis a medicinal plant species belonging to the Apocynaceae family, which produces vinblastine and vincristine along with 100 other monoterpenoid indole alkaloids. The process of biosynthesis of C. roseus alkaloids is complex, in which many genes, enzymes, and regulators are involved. Induced mutations may be considered as a potential source for producing a higher amount of vinblastine and vincristine in this plant species. Therefore, the objective of the present study was to examine the effects of different treatments utilized on the induced genetic changes in C. roseus plants and enzyme activities. METHODS AND RESULTS: Spermine, jasmonic acid, methyjasmonate, putrescine, and cold plasma treatments were used for seed treatments. Different molecular markers, namely inter simple sequence repeat, inter retrotransposon amplified polymorphism, and retrotransposon microsatellite amplified polymorphism were employed to reveal the induced genetic changes. Antioxidant enzyme activities were also studied. The treated plants showed genetic variability and a significant increase in antioxidant enzyme activity compared to the control plants. The putrescine treatment resulted in the highest level of activity in superoxidase. A significant positive correlation occurred between the molecular markers data and antioxidant enzyme activities in treated plants. CONCLUSION: Our data revealed that the different phytohormones and cold plasma treatments could induce both genetic and chemical content changes in C. roseus plants.

Kinetics of alkaline protease production by Streptomyces griseoflavus PTCC1130.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Proteases are a group of enzymes that catalyze the degradation of proteins resulting in the production of their amino acid constituents. They are the most important group of industrial enzymes which account for about 60% of total enzymes in the market and produced mainly by microorganisms. The attempts were made to study the kinetic parameters of protease produced by Streptomyces griseoflavus PTCC1130. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Streptomyces griseoflavus PTCC1130 was grown on casein agar. Different media such as BM1, BM2, BM3 and BM4 were prepared. Data obtained from growth and protease production were subjected to kinetics evaluation. Casein was used as substrate for protease activity and the released soluble peptide bearing aromatic amino acid were quantified by Folin Cioclateaue reagent. Protein content of the enzyme and the sugar utilized by the organism were estimated by Bradford and Miller's methods respectively. RESULTS: Basal Medium named as BM1, BM2, BM3 and BM4(50 mL in 250 mL Erlen Meyer flasks) were screened out to evaluate protease production by Streptomyces griseoflavus PTCC1130. They were inoculated with known amount of seed culture and kept on rotary shaker. To obtain the specific growth rate, wet weight of biomass was plotted against the time. The clarified supernatant was used for the analysis of protease by measuring the soluble peptide containing aromatic amino acid residues employing Folin Cioclateaue reagent. Our results showed that maximum level of enzyme production (14035 U/L) was occurred at late exponential phase using Basal Medium supplemented with zinc sulfate (0.5g/L), casein (10g/L) at pH 6.5. CONCLUSIONS: A kinetic study of protease production by Streptomyces griseoflavus PTCC1130 provided highly quantitative information regarding the behavior of a system, which is essential to study the fermentation process. Exploitation of such kinetics analysis would be useful in commercialization of microbial enzyme production.