Weasels may be cunning, we might admire the intelligence of dogs and cats, but we can be forgiven for expecting the jumping spider, a diminutive predator with a brain not much bigger than a poppy seed, to be one of Descartes’ automatons. Yet, jumping spiders, also known as salticids, alternate between entertaining and alarming us by planning prey-capture tactics ahead of time, adjusting their h...

Varied medicinal plants are known as a source of natural phytochemicals with antioxidant activities that can protect organisms from oxidative stress and from various chronic diseases. Papaver rhoeas has a long history of medicinal usage, especially for ailments in adults and children. The possible cytotoxicity, genotoxicity and potential antioxidant effect of plant extract isolated from flowers...

The actin cytoskeleton is a key target for signaling networks and plays a central role in translating signals into cellular responses in eukaryotic cells. Self-incompatibility (SI) is an important mechanism responsible for preventing self-fertilization. The SI system of Papaver rhoeas pollen involves a Ca(2+)-dependent signaling network, including massive actin depolymerization as one of the ea...

The taxonomy and phylogeny of Asian Meconopsis (Himalayan blue poppy) remain largely unresolved. We used the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region of nuclear ribosomal DNA (nrDNA) and the chloroplast DNA (cpDNA) trnL-F region for phylogenetic reconstruction of Meconopsis and its close relatives Papaver, Roemeria, and Stylomecon. We identified five main clades, which were well-supported in th...

Recently, the NADPH-dependent short-chain dehydrogenase/reductase (SDR) salutaridine reductase (E.C. 1.1.1.248) implicated in morphine biosynthesis was cloned from Papaver somniferum. In this report, a homology model of the Papaver bracteatum homolog was created based on the x-ray structure of human carbonyl reductase 1. The model shows the typical alpha/beta-folding pattern of SDRs, including ...

Karyomorphology of 30 species of Papaver L. (Papaveraceae) and in situ localization of rDNA sites on chromosomes of P. somniferum was used to establish phylogenetic affinities, ancestry and chromosomal variation during speciation. A simple biometrical parameter, the ‘Dispersion Index’, was employed to facilitate quantitative evolutionary gradation between the closely related karyotypes that fal...

INTRODUCTION Depression is one of the most frequent psychiatric disorders in the world with occurs with higher incidence in women. In the present study, the effect of water-alcoholic extract of Papaver rhoeas L. on forced swimming test (FST) in Swiss-Webster mice were examined. METHODS We used Swiss-Webster mice (20-25 g) to execute FST on them. The plant extract (1, 10, 30, and 100 mg/kg) wa...

DRUG ADDIcTIoN, especially through the use of poppy (Papaver somniferum Linn.) and hemp (Cannabis sativa Linn.), is the main concern of this paper. Although the use of these two plants in medieval Islam was extensive, yet little has been written on this timely subject by historians of medicine and pharmacology. Consulting contemporary original sources, it is my hope to sketch a history of their...

1 An experiment was carried out to test the hypotheses that in heterogeneous environments: (i) the size of species’ root systems will be negatively correlated with their ability to place roots precisely in nutrient-rich patches; (ii) precision of root placement will be less affected by distance to nutrient patches in species with large root systems; (iii) species with greater precision in root ...