الفهرس 
LITERATURE REVIEWOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Plant secondary metabolites provide a wealth of medicinally useful compounds
and play a crucial role in modern and traditional medicine. In some cases the compound of
interest is easily identifiable, and can often be synthetically produced. However, in many cases it
is not easy to determine whether the medicinal benefits are produced by one or several
compounds or if they have additive or synergistic effects. In these instances a synthetic
product cannot be produced and medicinal preparations will rely on plant material collected from
the wild, grown using conventional cultivation techniques, or produced using in vitro methods.
Echinacea spp. (family Asteraceae) herbal medicines and dietary supplements are traditionally
used as immunostimulants in the treatment of inflammatory and viral diseases. Echinacea
purpurea (L.) is an important commercial species. A great deal of research has indicated the
chemical composition of Echinacea spp., including alkamides, caffeic acid derivatives
(chicoric acid, caftaric acid and chlorogenic acid), and polysaccharides attracting claims of
beneficial pharmacological activity. Echinacea is an example of plant species with
medicinal activity that cannot be attributed to a single chemical, necessitating plant
production to obtain the full spectrum of metabolite. Several compounds are thought to play
significant roles in the efficacy of Echinacea products and are often used to ensure and test for
quality. Thus developing artificial (controlled) culture systems with the aims of standardizing
and improving production and marketing of medicinal species allows rapid propagation of
plants selected for their active principles and improves the quality and quantity of natural
pharmaceutical compounds. Accordingly, the current study aimed to establish plant cell lines
capable of producing high yields of secondary compounds in cell suspension cultures as an
alternative to conventional whole plant production to improve the productivity of locally
cultivated Echinacea purpurea and to ensure that produced compounds are effective. The
targeted group of compounds to be studied was the polyphenolics (caffeic acid derivatives).The
long-term goal of our research is to aid in the development of effective therapeutic preparations
of Echinacea, the goals of this particular project are
1. Establishment of callus cultures from explants isolated from plant material:
Callus induction is necessary, as the first step, in many tissue culture experiments.
Callus is produced when the initial response of the tissues to a wound is followed by the external
addition of growth regulators in an aseptic medium in order to maintain the rapid cell division
response and sustain it indefinitely. Calli can be obtained from almost any part of the plant; here
the root was chosen to be the explant. Phytohormones, such as cytokinin and auxin, are
necessary ingredients in any plant cell culture environment. Generally speaking, an equal
proportion of auxin to cytokinin hormones in solution will impact only cell proliferation and
result in the formation of callus masses. In our study callus induction was achieved using MS
media supplemented with 1.5mg/L BA and 0.5mg/L NAA.