Enhanced artemisinin accumulation and metabolic profiling of transgenic Artemisia annua L. plants over-expressing by rate-limiting enzymes from isoprenoid pathway

Artemisinin, a natural product isolated from aerial parts of Artemisia annua L. plant, is a potent antimalarial drug against drug-resistant malaria. In recent times, the demand (101–119 MT) for artemisinin is exponentially increasing with the increased incidence of drug-resistant malaria throughout the world, especially African and Asian continents. However, the commercial production of artemisinin-based combination therapies has limitation because of the presence of low concentration of artemisinin in plants. Therefore, transgenic lines of A. annua L. plants over-expressing both HMG-Co A reductase (hmgr) and amorpha-4, 11-diene synthase (ads) genes were developed to enhance the content of artemisinin. The selected transgenic lines (TR4, TR5, and TR7) were found to accumulate higher artemisinin (0.97–1.2%) as compared to the non-transgenic plants (0.63%). The secondary metabolite profiles of these lines were also investigated employing gas chromatography mass spectrometry, which revealed a clear difference in these metabolites in transgenic and non-transgenic lines of A. annua L. at different growth and developmental stages. The major metabolites reported in these lines at pre-flowering stage were related to essential oil and chlorophyll biosynthesis (71.33% in TR5 transgenic lines vs. 61.70% in non-transgenic line). Based on these results, we concluded that over-expression of both hmgr and ads genes in A. annua L. plants results not only increase in artemisinin content, but also enhances synthesis of other isoprenoid including essential oil. It is also evident from this study that the novel artemisinin-rich varieties of A. annua L. could be developed by suppressing essential oil biosynthesis, so that more carbon could preferentially be diverted from mevalonate pathway to artemisinin biosynthesis.