Effects of sucrose and chitosan elicitors on expression of CYP79F1 gene and sulforaphane content in lepidium draba seedlings

Glucoraphanine is an aliphatic glucosinolate, which largly found in Lepidium draba from Brassicaceae family. This glucosinolate convert to isothiocyanate, sulforaphane (SFN) in the presence of myrosinase which has different biological activities such as the antioxidant and anti bacterial properties, and also able to prevent proliferating of cancer cells.  CYP79F1 is the first enzyme in the biosynthesis pathway of glucoraphanine.

 In this study, L. draba seedlings wer grown for 7 days in the presence of different concentration of sucrose and chitosan (0, 25, 50, 100, 200 and 400 mg/L), in fully-random designs with three repetitions. After collection of the seedlings, SFN content in the arial parts of them were measured using HPLC apparatus. Furthermore, in the treated seedlings, the gene expression level of CYP79F1 were examined using the Real Time PCR technique.

 The results showed, that SFN content in the sucrose treated seedlings significantly increased compared to the control. While in the chitosan treated seedlings significant increase in SFN content was only seen at the 200 mg/L concentration. The results showed that the expression of CYP79 F1 was significantly increased in the treated seedlings with 50 mg/L sucrose and 50 and 100 mg/L chitosan compared to the control.

 According to the results, it concluded that the mentioned elicitor's concentrations can stimulate aliphatic glucosinolate biosynthesis through expression of CYP79F1 gene. Based on the role of SFN as a valuable medicinal metabolit and also the role of CYP79F1 enzyme in the glucoraphanin biosynthesis, it suggested that the effects of others concentrations and time of treatment of the mentioned elicitors were analyzed on this plant.