Hyoscyamus genus

The hairy root cultures of Hyoscyamus species have been studied for alkaloid production by several researchers [3, 23, 24]. However, the influence of phytohormones and light on the production of tropane alkaloids in transformed roots of this genus has not been reported in detail. In this section, we describe the alkaloid production by H. albus hairy roots cultured under different conditions. 

Tropane alkaloids from the Solanaceae have been frequently investigated by GC. The BSA (N,0-Bis(trimethylsilyl)acetamide) derivatives of scopolamine and 1-hyoscyamine have been quantified in extracts of suspension cultures and redifferentiated roots of Hyoscyamus niger (Yamada and Hashimoto 1982 Hashimoto and Yamada 1983) using a packed apolar column. More recently, the tropane alkaloid content of some species of this genus have been analyzed without derivatization with capillary apolar columns (Parr et al. 1990), using a method developed by Witte et al. (1987). 

Phygrine ( Pftysalishygrine ) had been believed to be a specific metabolite of the genus Physalts detected in nine species attempts to discover this compound in other solanaceous genera including the closely related Withania had failed (Basey et al. 1992). However, in a more recent study this alkaloid could be identified also in four Hyoscyamus spp. (El-Shazly et al. 1997). 

Figure 1.16. Alkaloids of the genera Nicotiana, Duboisia, and Hyoscyamus, family Solanaceae. At the top left is nicotine, and on the right is the tropane alkaloid type. Below there is a schematic chromatogram. The genus Duboisia includes species containing both alkaloids, and sometimes a difference exists between genotypes of a single species (Nowacki and Waller, 1973). Courtesy of the publishers of Flora, V. E. B. Gustav Fisher Verlag.

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