A forensic method comprising solid phase extraction and HPLC analysis was developed for the detection and confirmation of atropine and scopolamine, the main toxic alkaloids of Datura stramonium and Datura ferox. This method allowed the direct coupling of an electrospray (ZMD) mass selective detector to the HPLC system. Under these conditions, atropine and scopolamine were well separated from ot...

It has been hypothesized that slow-growing plants are more likely to maximize above-ground biomass and fitness when defoliated by herbivores than those with an already high relative growth rate (RGR). Some populations of the annual herb Datura stramonium L. can tolerate foliar damage better than others. The physiological basis of this difference is examined here in a comparative study of two ec...

India has a great wealth of various naturally occurring plant drugs which have potential pharmacological activities. The troublesome weed, Datura stramonium (Jimsonweed) is a plant with both poisonous and medicinal properties and has been proven to have great pharmacological potential with a great utility and usage in folklore medicine. The present investigation was therefore undertaken to dete...

M. van Kleunen ([email protected]) and S. D. Johnson, Centre for Invasion Biology, School of Biological and Conservation Sciences, Univ. of KwaZulu-Natal, P. Bag X01 Scottsville, Pietermaritzburg 3209, South Africa. M. Fischer and present address for MvK: Inst. of Plant Sciences, Univ. of Bern, CH-3013 Bern, Switzerland. MF also at: Inst. for Biochemistry and Biology, Univ. of Potsdam, Maul...

Thirty-six alkaloids were identified in the organs of Datura ceratocaula by GC/MS. Thirty-three of them have not been previously reported for the species. Furthermore, a new tropane ester was tentatively identified as 3-(3'-formyloxytropoyloxy)tropane on basis of its mass spectral fragmentation. Hyoscyamine was the main alkaloid in the plant organs.

in regard to aggregate constitution. The several types of recurrent mutants known to involve change of configuration (such as half-mutants and mass-mutants) correspond with these in frequency of origin and in gametic constitution. The fact that the crossing over which yields them is rare is not surprising since crossing over is regularly found to be reduced in structural heterozygotes in Drosop...

Three adult patients, two of whom were brothers and the third their uncle, were brought to my dispensary. They said that they had taken together some home-made sattu (flour of fried wheat and gram made into paste with sugar) in the morning, and since then were feeling very dizzy. They had come to the dispensary within one hour after their breakfast of sattu. Although no foul play was suspected,...

Theory predicts patterns of defense across taxa based on notions of tradeoffs and synergism among defensive traits when plants and herbivores coevolve. Because the expression of characters changes ontogenetically, the evolution of plant strategies may be best understood by considering multiple traits along a trajectory of plant development. Here we addressed the ontogenetic expression of chemic...

The purpose of this study was to determine the atropine and scopolamine content in different parts of Datura plant, (Datura metel L.), growing wild in Syria. These alkaloids were separated and quantified by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) coupled with diode-array detector (DAD), and fluorescence detector (FLD), using a reversed phase Eclipse C18 column and employing a mixture of w...