Nicotinic acid

Nicotinic acid is used in tissue culture:

• Vitamin

Nicotinic acid is a vitamin used in plant tissue culture. It’s also known as niacin or pyridine-3-carboxylic acid.

• Stability

Nicotinic acid is stable in a liquid MS culture medium during autoclaving.

• Growth

Increasing the levels of nicotinic acid in the medium can improve the growth of plantlets. For example, in one experiment, increasing the level of nicotinic acid in the medium improved the petiole length of taro shoot cultures.

• Biomarker

The ratio of nicotinic acid to nicotinamide can be used as a biomarker to detect microbial contamination in cell therapy products. Nicotinic acid is present in contaminated cell cultures but is nearly absent in sterile cell culture medium.