Production of Anthocyanins in Grape Cell Cultures: A potential Source of Raw Material for Pharmaceutical, Food, and Cosmetic Industries

Research continues to show that many artificial pigments are actually detrimental to our health. According to [1], there is an increasing consumer preference for healthy foods, which has invit‐ ed considerable demand for the use of anthocyanins as natural colorants, because of their natu‐ ral pedigree and healthful properties. Anthocyanins are the most widely distributed group of water-soluble plant pigments in nature. They are mainly responsible for the mauve, red, blue, and purple colors in flowers, fruits, leaves, seeds and other organs in most of the flowering plants. The other important class of water-soluble pigments are betalains, which are present on‐ ly in plants belonging to 13 families of Caryophyllales order [2-5]. An interesting phenomenon is the existence of mutual exclusiveness of anthocyanins and betalains in plant kingdom [3, 5-9]. Recent research demonstrated that simultaneous production of anthocyanins and betalains is possible in cell cultures and seedlings of anthocyanin producing plants by introduction and ex‐ pression of genes encoding dihydroxyphenylalanine (L-DOPA) dioxygenases in combination with substrate precursor feeding [10]. However, the co-occurrence of both pigments in the same plant species have never been found in nature and the plants which produce anthocyanins nev‐ er produce betalains and vice versa [6]. The commercial production of anthocyanin pigments is one of the fastest growing segments of the food colorant industry [2, 11]. The only industrial sources for anthocyanin pigments are from whole plant extracts [1], with the most common source being grape skins from the wine industry. According to [1], the demand of natural colo‐ rants continues to rise by 5-15% every year and this translated to the sales of anthocyanins isolat‐ ed from grape skins in 2002, which was estimated to be US$200 million worldwide. The increase