Alnus glutinosa, Fraxinus excelsior and Papaver rhoeas have long been used in folkloric medicine for the treatment of various ailments. As part of our continuing screening of plant extracts for activities, the extracts of A. glutinosa, F. excelsior and P. rhoeas have been screened for their antioxidant and antibacterial activities, as well as their general toxicity towards brine shrimps. Among ...

Papaver libanoticum is an endemic plant to Lebanese region (family Papaveraceae) that has not been investigated before. The present study aimed to explore the analgesic activity of dried ethanolic extract of Papaver libanoticum (PLE) using tail flick, hot plate, and acetic acid induced writhing models in mice. The involvement of opioid receptors in the analgesic mechanism was investigated using...

Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated9 (Cas9) endonuclease system is a powerful RNA-guided genome editing tool. CRISPR/Cas9 has been well studied in model plant species for targeted genome editing. However, few studies have been reported on plant species without whole genome sequence information. Currently, no study has been performed to manipulate...

Norcoclaurine synthase (NCS) catalyzes the enantioselective Pictet-Spengler condensation of dopamine and 4-hydroxyphenylacetaldehyde as the first step in benzylisoquinoline alkaloid (BIA) biosynthesis. NCS orthologs in available transcriptome databases were screened for variants that might improve the low yield of BIAs in engineered microorganisms. Databases for 21 BIA-producing species from fo...

Links between licit and illicit economies fuel processes of conflict in countries mired in irregular warfare. However, it is often infeasible to gather demographic and economic data in the war zone that illuminate such links. Combining remote sensing data with local surveys offers an alternative to direct data collection. We present and validate an implementation of such an approach in order to...