Benzothiadiazole synthetic derivatives

Jasmonic acid (JA) and its methyl ester (MJA) are important members of the family of natural jasmonates. Exogenously adding MJA was shown to increase the production of secondary metabolites in a variety of plant species. Some synthetic elicitors have also been proven to be too. We describe a series of synthetic cell culture elicitors in Chapter 4, including MJA derivatives and benzothiadiazole (BTH) derivatives. Some of them display more potent activity in Taxus chinensis cell culture and Panax notoginseng cell culture than MJA, which reflects the full application of chemical bioengineering in plant cell culture. 

Fig. 1. Salicylic acid and its synthetic functional analogs. Salicylic acid and its derivative acetyl salicylic acid (aspirin) induce expression of the PR genes and enhance resistance to pathogens. The two synthetic compounds, 2,6-dichloroisonicotinic acid (INA) and benzothiadiazole S-methyl ester (BTH) show structural similarities to salicylic acid and like salicylic acid induce expression of the PR genes and enhance resistance to pathogens.

Encouraged by the success of BTH, a large number of benzothiadiazole derivatives were developed. New synthetic elicitors that showed powerful eliciting activities on taxoid biosynthesis by Taxus chinensis cell suspension cultures were obtained as shown in Figure 7.7. JA and JA derivatives... 

---