Increasing taxol production in hairy roots formed in Iranian yew (Taxus baccata.sp.)

Taxol is an anti-cancer drug and can be extracted from the yew tree. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of Methyl jasmonate and Salicylic acid elicitors on taxol production in hairy roots formed in Iranian yew. Three strains of Agrobacterium rhizogenes A4, R1000 and ATCC15834 were used to create hairy roots in yew explants. The results showed that only A4 strain caused the formation of hairy roots in the explants and PCR analysis showed that the Agrobacterium rooting gene was transferred to the explants. In the operation of growing hairy roots, three concentrations of 1, 10 and 100 µmol of methyl jasmonate and salicylic acid were used separately and in combination to increase paclitaxol production. The analysis performed by HPLC showed that the addition of elicitors to the culture medium increases the amount of taxol in hairy roots, and the greatest increase was obtained by adding 100 micromoles of methyl jasmonate alone, which increased the amount of paclitaxol production in hairy roots by 5 times.