An overview of biotechnological interventions and abiotic elicitors on biomass and withanolide biosynthesis in Withania somnifera (L.) Dunal

Withania somnifera is a solanaceous plant species having immense therapeutic potential and commercial values, attributed by pharmacologically active secondary metabolites viz. withanolide and withaferin. The ethanopharmacological use of this plant has been reported since very ancient time and currently, drugs derived from it have been extensively used to cure cancer, sterility, neural and brain disorders. Moreover, withaferin A is extensively used as an anti-cancer agent. Due to extensive harvesting, insufficient withanolide content, and increasing global demand, there is urgent need for in-vitro propagation and conservation techniques in W. somnifera. Biotechnological approaches like micropropagation, hairy root culture in bioreactors and shake flasks, suspension cultures, etc are being used for scaling-up the production of biomass and its pharmaceutical compounds. In addition, abiotic stresses/elicitors also proved to be a promising approach for enhanced synthesis of withanolides. Recently, the emergence of "Omics" era has opened new insights for the engineering of withanolide biosynthetic pathway by metabolic engineering, metabolomics, genetic transformations, gene overexpression, silencing, bioinformatics, and gene mining strategies. However, there are some limitations in genomic data availability, thus there is a strong need of more research for better elucidation of secondary metabolite biosynthesis in W. somnifera. The presented review entails the research works performed for enhanced biomass production and to scale-up the synthesis of withanolides by employing biotechnological tools, abiotic elicitors for growth and enhanced metabolism in W. somnifera. Additionally, this compilation also discusses about update on W. somnifera sequence data in bioinformatic repository sites and their futuristic use for its improvement.