Development of plant tissue culture of Plumbago rosea Linn. for enhanced production of secondary metabolites

P rosea syn. Indica belong to the family of plumbaginaceae, is an important medicinal plant, cultivated widely in India. The roots of these plant are generally used for medicinal purposes mainly as diuretic, germicidal, vessicant, and abortifacient. It is also used for anaemia, diarrhea, leprosy and common wart. The bark of the root contains orange yellow pigment named plumbagin, a crystalline substance, belongs to the class of naphthoquinone. Its chemical structure is 5-hydroxy 2-methyl 1,4naphthoquinone. Apart from P rosea, P zeylanica, P europea, Drosera and Drosophyllum also contains plumbagin. The most exploited source of plumbagin is, of course, P. rosea roots. The roots contain O.9mg/ g D.Wt. of plumbagin in the roots. These plants grow very slowly and the roots suitable for plumbagin extraction can be obtained only after several years of growth. The productivity of the plant is also rather poor. The focus of the present study was to develop alternative strategies to obtain plumbagin. The tissue culture of P rosea for micropropagation has been studied

Studies On In Vitfio Production Of Secondary Metabolites From Medicinal Plants

In the light of the very huge demand for natural ephedrine and pseudoephidrine, a search for an angiosperm plant containing the alkaloid ephedrine was made and could locate Sida spp. of malvaceae family. Sida is a large genus of, herbs and shrubs distributed throughout the tropics. About a dozen species occur in India. The medicinally important species known are S.rhombrfolia S.cordata and S.spinosa (Anon, 1972). Among the various species, S.rh0mbIfolia is the most widely used one in the traditional system of medicine. An attempt was made in the present study to develop an ideal bioprocess for the in vitro production of ephedrine from the cell culture system of Sida rhombrfolia Linn. ssp. retusa. The callus and suspension culture were initiated and attempts were made to enhance the yield positively by employing various strategies like mutagenesis, immobilization and addition of precursors, elicitors and penneabilizing agents.

Production and Characterization of Lignin Peroxidases from Mangrove Ascomycetes

The continually growing worldwide hazardous waste problem is receiving much attention lately. The development of cost effective, yet efficient methods of decontamination are vital to our success in solving this problem.Bioremediation using white rot fungi, a group of basidiomycetes characterized by their ability to degrade lignin by producing extracellular LiP, MnP and laccase have come to be recognized globally which is described in detail in Chapter 1.These features provide them with tremendous advantages over other micro-organisms.Chapter 2 deals with the isolation and screening of lignin degrading enzyme producing micoro-organisms from mangrove area. Marine microbes of mangrove area has great capacity to tolerate wide fluctuations of salinitie.Primary and secondary screening for lignin degrading enzyme producing halophilic microbes from mangrove area resulted in the selection of two fungal strains from among 75 bacteria and 26 fungi. The two fungi, SIP 10 and SIP ll, were identified as penicillium sp and Aspergillus sp respectively belonging to the class Ascomycetes .Specific activity of the purified LiP was 7923 U/mg protein. The purification fold was 24.07 while the yield was 18.7%. SDS PAGE of LiP showed that it was a low molecular weight protein of 29 kDa.Zymogram analysis using crystal violet dye as substrate confirmed the peroxidase nature of the purified LiP.The studies on the ability of purified LiP to decolorize different synthetic dyes was done. Among the dyes studied, crystal violet, a triphenyl methane dye was decolorized to the greatest extent.

Evaluation of cyanobacteria for biomass production and effluent treatment

The microalgae gained importance as food and feed as well as source of fine chemicals since the l960’s. Spirulina became the trend setter due to its easily culturable properties as well as nutritional composition. A rapid expansion of microalgal industry occurred in the Asia-Pacific region as microalgae came to stay as a health food supplement. Microalgae have been an integral component of oxidation ponds usually incorporated with wastewater treatment. Over the last few decades, efforts have been made to apply intensive microalgal cultures to perform biological tertiary treatment of secondary effluents. Given the limited number of species still available for commercial exploitation, it is imperative to isolate and cultivate those photosynthetic organisms with high growth rate and biomass accumulation, which could play the dual role of cleaning the wastewater and also providing useful biomass. This has been the objective of this study ie. 0 To develop pure cultures of local isolates of Cyanobacteria for extraction of biochemicals of commercial value 0 To couple biomass production with effluent treatment

Lipase Production by Candida rugosa

Strain improvement is one of the major objectives for maximizing the microbial production of industrially significant primary and secondary metabolites. This goal can be achieved by judicious tuning of the organisms by monitoring its growth parameters and optimizing adequate supply of micro and macro nutrients, inducers, pH, temperature and other factors which control fermentation. Though C. rugosa has been under extensive studies for lipases, maximum world production is only 36 units. In fact, in India, enhanced production conditions for lipases have not yet been initiated. C. rugosa has been cultivated in diverse environments like liquid, semi-solid, solid—state and immobilized conditions, though major emphasis is on SmF or suspension culture. Hence the present investigations mainly focused on increasing the yield by adjusting the physico-chemical growth parameters and to characterize the lipase isoforms secreted by C. rugosa in the culture medium. Maximum possible improved methods were investigated to achieve these objectives. Within this under-optimised background, enhancement of lipase production and its characterization were investigated, employing modified liquid, semi-solid, solid—state and immobilized fermentation strategies