To examine the role of oral Ganoderma spore oil in cardiovascular disease, we used transverse aortic constriction (TAC) in mice to model pressure overload-induced cardiomyopathy. Our preliminary results demonstrated a potential cardioprotective role for spore oil extracted from Ganoderma. We found that Ganoderma treatment normalized ejection fraction and corrected the fractional shortening gene...

Ganoderma lucidum and Ganoderma sinense, known as Lingzhi in Chinese, are commonly used Chinese medicines with excellent beneficial health effects. Triterpenes and polysaccharides are usually considered as their main active components. However, the content of triterpenes differs significantly between the two species of Ganoderma. To date, a careful comparison of polysaccharides from the two spe...

We examined the alleviation of cyclophosphamide-induced immunodepression by the antlered form of Ganoderma lucidum (G. lucidum AF) and also evaluated the anti-tumor and anti-metastatic effects of G. lucidum AF in cyclophosphamide-treated mice. G. lucidum AF alleviated cyclophosphamide-induced decrease in body weight, natural killer (NK) activity, interferon (IFN)-gamma production, and cytotoxic...

BACKGROUND Ganoderma lucidum (G. lucidum) has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for thousands of years because of its immunomodulatory properties. It is believed that G. lucidum enhances the human immune response by improving the function of human polymorphonuclear neutrophils (PMNs); nevertheless, the actual mechanism by which G. lucidum acts on human PMNs remains unknown. In this stud...

UNLABELLED Heat stress (HS) influences the growth and development of organisms. Thus, a comprehensive understanding of how organisms sense HS and respond to it is required. Ganoderma lucidum, a higher basidiomycete with bioactive secondary metabolites, has become a potential model system due to the complete sequencing of its genome, transgenic systems, and reliable reverse genetic tools. In thi...

A homology-based PCR method was used to clone a cDNA encoding lanosterol synthase (LS) from Ganoderma lucidum (G. lucidum), which produces triterpenes. The cDNA of the LS (GenBank accession no. GQ169528) was found to contain an open reading frame (ORF) of 2,181 bp encoding a 726 amino acid polypeptide, whereas the LS genomic DNA sequence (GenBank accession no. GQ169529) consists of 2,924 bp. Fu...