From the water-soluble portion of the methanol extract of the fruit of Glehnia littoralis Fr. SCHMIDT ex MIQ. (Umbelliferae; "hamabofu" in Japanese), thirty compounds, including three new monoterpenoids and a new monoterpenoid glucoside, a new benzofuran glucoside, a new alkyl glucoside, and a new glucide, were obtained. Their structures were clarified by spectral investigation.

Background: Diabetes mellitus in some clinical cases is accompanied with hyperalgesia. In this study, we evaluated the possible beneficial effect of chronic pelargonidin (PG) treatment on hyperalgesia in streptozotocin (STZ)-diabetic neuropathic rat. Methods: Male Wistar rats (n = 56) were divided into seven groups, i.e. control, diabetic, PG-treated control, PG (single- and multiple-dose)-trea...

Celtis australis is a deciduous tree commonly known as Mediterranean hackberry or the European nettle tree. The fruit of hackberry are seldom used for nutritional purposes. The nutritional and physicochemical properties of ripe hackberry fruit from Istria (Marasi village near Vrsar, Croatia) were determined, including water, total fiber, protein, vitamin, mineral, and phenolic contents. This an...

Proteomic screening of strawberry (Fragaria ananassa) yielded a 58% success rate in protein identification in spite of the fact that no genomic sequence is available for this species. This was achieved by a combination of MALDI-MS/MS de novo sequencing of double-derivatized peptides and indel-tolerant searching against local protein databases built on both EST and full-length nucleotide sequenc...

Gallic acid and anthocyanins are abundant plant food bioactives present in many fruits and vegetables, being especially important in the composition of berries. Gallic acid has been shown to possess cytotoxic properties in several cancer cell lines and to inhibit carcinogenesis in animal models. However, its mechanism of action is not yet fully understood. The aim of this study was to elucidate...

In this study, a red mutant was obtained through in vitro regeneration of a wild purple potato. High-performance liquid chromatography and Mass spectrometry analysis revealed that pelargonidin-3-O-glucoside and petunidin-3-O-glucoside were main anthocyanins in the mutant and wild type tubers, respectively. In order to thoroughly understand the mechanism of anthocyanin transformation in two mate...

In maize, mutations in the pr1 locus lead to the accumulation of pelargonidin (red) rather than cyanidin (purple) pigments in aleurone cells where the anthocyanin biosynthetic pathway is active. We characterized pr1 mutation and isolated a putative F3'H encoding gene (Zmf3'h1) and showed by segregation analysis that the red kernel phenotype is linked to this gene. Genetic mapping using SNP mark...

To investigate the physiological functions of polyphenols from acerola (Malpighia emarginata DC.) fruit, the effects on melanogenesis were studied. The crude polyphenol concentrated extract from acerola (C-AP) was used to examine the skin-lightening effect on brownish guinea pigs which had been subjected to controlled UVB irradiation. The results show that C-AP significantly lightened the UVB-i...