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Updated: Apr 4, 2026
A Customizable Approach for the Enzymatic Production and Purification of Diterpenoid Natural Products
Published on: October 4, 2019
Enhancing diterpenoid concentration in Salvia miltiorrhiza hairy roots through pathway engineering with maize C1
Shujuan Zhao1, Jinjia Zhang2, Ronghui Tan2
1The SATCM Key Laboratory for New Resources & Quality Evaluation of Chinese Medicine, The MOE Key Laboratory for Standardization of Chinese Medicines and Shanghai Key Laboratory of Complex Prescription, Institute of Chinese Materia Medica, Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai 201203, PR China zhaoshujuan@126.com zhaoshujuan@shutcm.edu.cn.
Abstract:
Tanshinones are valuable natural diterpenoids from danshen (Salvia miltiorrhiza Bunge). Here, it was demonstrated that maize transcription factor C1 improved the accumulation of tanshinones by comprehensively upregulating the pathway genes, especially SmMDC and SmPMK in danshen hairy roots, yielding total tanshinones up to 3.59mg g(-1) of dry weight in line C1-6, a 3.4-fold increase compared with the control. Investigation of 2024bp of the SmMDC promoter fragment revealed that C1-mediated upregulation of terpenoid genes was possibly due to the direct interaction of C1 with its recognition sequences. The increase of tanshinones was accompanied by a decrease of salvianolic acid production, the other bioactive ingredient in danshen, by up to 37% compared with the control. This was the result of the downregulation of SmTAT, the entry-point gene of the tyrosine pathway, which promoted metabolic flow to anthocyanins rather than to salvianolic acids. Based on the findings of the present study, it was concluded that cis-acting elements shared by terpenoid and phenylpropanoid biosynthetic genes are partially responsible for the C1-stimulated variation of tanshinone and salvianolic acid concentrations.
