Effect of Homogeneity on Cell Growth and Anthocyanin Biosynthesis in Suspension Cultures of Vitis vinifera

The instability of secondary metabolite production is a ubiquitous problem in plant cell cultures. To understand the instability, the investigation of anthocyanin accumulation in suspension cultures of Vitis vinifera, as a model system, has been initiated in our laboratory. Suspension cultures of a relatively homogeneous cell line E of V. vinifera were established by long-term cell-line selection based on the differences in their anthocyanin contents. The aggregate size of E was smaller than that of other cell lines obtained using the routine screening method. The variation coefficients of anthocyanin content in suspension cultures of E were 8.7 % in long-term subcultures and 5 % in repeated flasks. The effects of elicitation, precursor feeding, and light irradiation on biomass and anthocyanin accumulation in suspension cultures of E were investigated, and the results showed that all the variation coefficients were lower than 12 %, which indicated the importance of homogeneity on the stability of anthocyanin production in plant cell cultures. With the combined treatment of 30 μmol/L phenylalanine and 218 μmol/L methyl jasmonate in the dark in suspension cultures of E, the anthocyanin content and production in suspension cultures of E were 5.89-fold and 4.30-fold of the controls, respectively, and all the variation coefficients of biomass and anthocyanin accumulation were lower than those of the controls in five successive subcultures.