Since the pre-historic era, humans have been using forests as a food, drugs and handcraft reservoir. Today, the use of botanical raw material to produce pharmaceuticals, herbal remedies, teas, spirits, cosmetics, sweets, dietary supplements, special industrial compounds and crude materials constitute an important global resource in terms of healthcare and economy. In recent years, DNA barcoding...

Marine chromophytes are taxonomically diverse group of algae and contribute approximately half of the total oceanic primary production. To understand the global patterns of functional diversity of chromophytic phytoplankton, robust bioinformatics and statistical analyses including deep phylogeny based on 2476 form ID rbcL gene sequences representing seven ecologically significant oceanographic ...

The RuBisCO large subunit gene (rbcL) has been the focus of numerous plant phylogenetic studies and studies on molecular evolution in parasitic plants. However, there has been a lack of investigation of photosynthesis gene molecular evolution in fully mycoheterotrophic plants. These plants invade pre-existing mutualistic associations between ectomycorrhizal trees and fungi, from which they obta...

BACKGROUND At present, plant molecular systematics and DNA barcoding techniques rely heavily on the use of chloroplast gene sequences. Because of the relatively low evolutionary rates of chloroplast genes, there are very few choices suitable for molecular studies on angiosperms at low taxonomic levels, and for DNA barcoding of species. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We scanned the entire chlo...

The Bundle sheath defective2 (Bsd2) gene is required for ribulose-1, 5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco) accumulation in maize. Using a Mutator transposable element as a molecular probe, we identified a tightly linked restriction fragment length polymorphism that cosegregated with the bsd2-conferred phenotype. This fragment was cloned, and sequences flanking the Mutator insertion wer...

The second largest BamHI fragment (B2) of the chloroplast DNA in Triticum (wheat) and Aegilops contains a highly variable region (a hotspot), resulting in four types of B2 of different size, i.e. B2l (10.5kb), B2m (10.2kb), B2 (9.6kb) and B2s (9.4kb). In order to gain a better understanding of the molecular nature of the variations in length and explain unexpected identity among B2 of Ae. ovata...

Curculigo orchioides is most commonly used as an imperative medicinal plant in Vietnam. The roots are mainly to treat sexual dysfunction, back pain, arthritis, nephritis, jaundice, and infertility. Given the high market demand herbal market, C. traders adulterate with other similar plants for illegitimate benefits. Maturase K (matK) ribulose 1,5-biphosphate carboxylase (rbcL) DNA barcode loci p...

background genetic manipulation of chloroplast in higher plants offers a number of unique prerogatives, including; undesirable of pleiotropic genome and gene silencing effects and also use as an important agronomic trait for producing essential biomaterials and industrial enzymes. in order to manipulate chloroplast genome, specific vectors are required. these vectors can be transformed and expr...

Background: Saffron (Crocus sativus L.) is a common but very expensive herbal medicine. As an important traditional medicine, it has an outstanding effect in treating irregular and painful menstruation. Recently, the over-demand tendency of saffron results in an unusual phenomenon in the medicinal markets. Adulterants and saffron-like substitutes are intentionally mixed into medicinal markets a...