Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), a slowly progressive neuropsychiatric illness, principally characterized by memory deficits, has become the fourth leading cause of death in developed nations. Since the patients with AD suffer from marked reduction of cholinergic neuronal function resulting in a deficiency in acetylcholine (ACh) concentration in the brain, and these reductions are associated with impa...

Narcissus plants (Narcissus tazetta var. chinensis) showing mosaic or striping leaves were collected from around Japan, and tested for virus infections using potyvirus-specific primers. Many were found to be infected with a macluravirus and mixtures of different potyviruses, one third of them narcissus yellow stripe virus (NYSV)-like viruses. Genomes of nine of the NYSV-like viruses were sequen...

Recently several complete cDNAs encoding the Narcissus tazetta lectins (NTL) were cloned. The sequence analyses of the cloned DNAs reveal that there are at least three unidentical positive clones for NTLs. The primary structure of the three NTL clones contains a mature polypeptide consisting of 105 amino acids and a C-terminal peptide extension beyond the C-terminal amino acids Thr-Gly. There a...

R2R3 MYB transcription factors play key functions in the regulation of secondary metabolites. In the present study, a R2R3 MYB transcriptional factor NtMYB2 was identified from Chinese narcissus (Narcissus tazetta L. var. Chinensis Roem) and functionally characterized. NtMYB2 belongs to subgroup 4 of the R2R3 MYB transcription factor family that are related to repressor MYBs involved in the reg...

Antimicrobial activity and cytotoxicity of fifty one extracts of different parts of 14 plants were studied. Ethanol, methanol, aqueous, butanol, and n-hexane extracts were tested against three gram negative, two gram positive bacteria, and two fungi. Cytotoxicity and phytochemical screening were determined using MTT and TLC assays, respectively. Of the fifty one extracts, twenty two showed acti...

Leaf blight and bulb rot symptoms were observed on narcissus plants grown in Yongin, Cheongwon and Namhae areas in Korea during disease survey from 1999 to 2002. A total of 15 isolates of Botrytis sp. were obtained from the infected plant parts of narcissus. All the isolates were identified as Botrytis narcissicola based on their morphological and cultural characteristics. Three isolates of B. ...