Influence of Titania–graphene nanocomposite and coronatine on taxanes production and expression patterns of the key genes involved in taxol biosynthetic pathway in cell suspension culture of Taxus baccata

Abstract In this study, the potential effects of two elicitors of coronatine and TiO2/graphene nanocomposite were evaluated on the expression of txs, dbat, bapt and dbtnbt genes, as well as taxanes production in cell suspension cultures of Taxus baccata. For this purpose, we studied the influence of 10 µMl− 1 of coronatine and 30 µgl− 1 of TiO2/graphene nanocomposite along with phenylalanine and benzoeic acid at the concentrations of 0.003 mM and 1.0 mM, respectively. Our results indicated that the amounts of taxanes induced by TiO2/graphene nanocomposite were upper than coronatine and control (42.47, 22.187, and 13.36 µgl− 1 DW). The maximum amounts of baccatin III and taxol were detected at four days after treatment with TiO2/graphene nanocomposite. The highest quantities of 10-deacetylbaccatin III and 10-deacetyltaxol were detected in day 16 after treatment with TiO2/graphene nanocomposite and the control, respectively. The amount of cephalomannine get raised gradually with TiO2/graphene nanocomposite. Meanwhile, TiO2/graphene nanocomposite increased the relative gene expressions TXS and DBTNBT than Coronatine. The uppermost amount of TXS expression was observed 4 days after application of two elicitors. The DBAT gene exhibited the lowest gene expression among the four genes studied. The minimum and the maximum level of BAPT expression was detected after treatment with coronatine and TiO2/graphene nanocomposite at day 4, respectively. The highest expression of DBTNBT occurred after treatment with TiO2/graphene nanocomposite at day 2, whilst treatment with coronatine had no effect. In conclusion, TiO2/graphene nanocomposite was more effective elicitors to induce production of taxanes and gene expressions levels during experiments as compared with coronatine and control.