Among single elicitation treatments, SA at a concentration of 500 μM and MeSA at concentrations greater than 300 μM, besides GLU, decreased cell growth. In the treatment with 500 μM SA and 600 μM MeSA, the dry cell weight (DCW) at day 10 decreased by approximately 30%, when compared with the control (Table 1). The DCW decrease by GLU did not significantly affect the total intracellular phenolics. Whereas, SA and MeSA at those high concentrations dramatically reduced the intracellular phenolics while increasing the extracellular counterpart Selleck Epacadostat (Table 1), indicating the release of phenolics components, probably due to broken cells. As

anthocyanins are stored in vacuoles, and their biosynthesis is related to that of resveratrol, the intracellular production of these secondary metabolites was evaluated at the same time. JA was the only elicitor in this study that increased the production of selleck kinase inhibitor both intracellular resveratrol (Fig. 1A) and anthocyanins (Fig. 1B). Curtin et al. [22] also reported the enhancement of anthocyanin biosynthesis in V. vinifera L. cell suspension cultures by JA and in combination with light irradiation. JA might activate the phenylpropanoid pathway, which provide substrates for both anthocyanin and resveratrol syntheses. As a result, total phenolics yield was increased several

fold by the JA treatment ( Table 1). The addition of JA was found to initiate the de novo transcription of genes responsible for the production of enzymes in the phenylpropanoid pathway [23]. SA at concentrations of 10 μM and 100 μM at least doubled the production of intracellular resveratrol at day 10 ( Fig. 2A). However, when SA was combined with JA, a negative effect was observed. Demeclocycline SA was previously proposed to inhibit the synthesis and signal transduction of JA [24]. The addition of CHI – a derivative of chitin – increased the level of intracellular resveratrol by around fivefold at day 7 (Fig. 2B). However, the difference in the level of intracellular resveratrol between the elicited cultures and the control was smaller at day 10. At much

higher concentrations, CHI was also found to increase the intracellular accumulation of resveratrol from 3 to 10.5-fold in V. vinifera cv. Barbera cell cultures [25]. Both chitin and glucan are major structural components of many fungi, and they are known to increase the accumulation of soluble pathogenesis-related proteins in plants [26]. Therefore, as is the case with CHI, the treatment with GLU at all tested concentrations increased the level of intracellular resveratrol by 5–7-fold at day 7 when compared with the control (Fig. 3A). Different from JA effects, GLU treatment lowered the production of anthocyanins (Fig. 3B). Stilbene synthase and chalcone synthase – the branch-point enzymes of the biosynthetic pathways of stilbenes and anthocyanins – are known to use the same substrates [1].