Natural products are among the most important sources of lead molecules for drug discovery. With the development of affordable whole-genome sequencing technologies and other 'omics tools, the field of natural products research is currently undergoing a shift in paradigms. While, for decades, mainly analytical and chemical methods gave access to this group of compounds, nowadays genomics-based m...

An increased production of superoxide has been shown to mediate glutamate-induced neuron death. We monitored intracellular superoxide production of hippocampal neurons during and after exposure to the glutamate receptor agonist NMDA (300 microm). During a 30 min NMDA exposure, intracellular superoxide production increased significantly and remained elevated for several hours after wash-out of N...

Trans-acting small interfering RNAs (tasiRNAs) are plant-specific endogenous siRNAs that control non-identical mRNAs via cleavage. The production of tasiRNAs is triggered by cleavage of capped and polyadenylated primary TAS transcripts (pri-TASs) by specific miRNAs. Following miRNA-directed cleavage, either 5' or 3' cleavage fragments are converted into double-stranded RNAs (dsRNAs) by RNA-DEPE...

the effect of three levels (0, 28.65, 57.31mg /200mg substrate) of golpar (heracleum persicum: hp) on in vitro rumen ecosystem and on methane production was assessed. gas production (gp) was recorded from 1 to 54h past of incubation. the parameters studied were in vitro gas production (ivgp), methane production, ammonia-n concentration (nh3-n), in vitro organic matter degradability (ivomde), pa...

A split plot 3 by 4 experiment was designed to investigate and distinguish the relationships among production of secondary metabolites, soluble sugar, phenylalanine ammonia lyase (PAL; EC 4.3.1.5) activity, leaf gas exchange, chlorophyll content, antioxidant activity (DPPH), and lipid peroxidation under three levels of CO2 (400, 800, and 1200 μ mol/mol) and four levels of light intensity (225, ...

The resource availability hypothesis predicts an increase in the allocation to secondary metabolites when carbon gain is improved relative to nutrient availability, which normally occurs during periods of low irradiance. The present work was carried out to confirm this hypothesis by investigating the effects of decreasing irradiance on the production of plant secondary metabolites (flavonoids a...

Classification of major secondary metabolite groups is described. A short account is also given to ultraviolet (UV) climatology and UV response in plants. Investigations regarding secondary metabolite production in plants, in vitro cultivated plant cell and tissue cultures under UV radiation, particularly UV-B (280-315 nm) and UV-C (200-280 nm) are reviewed. The capacity of plants, callus and t...