Polyploidization plays an important role in plant speciation. The most recent estimates report that up to 15% of angiosperm speciation events and 31% in ferns are accompanied by changes in ploidy level. Polyploids can arise either through autopolyploidy, when the sets of chromosomes originate from a single species, or through allopolyploidy, when they originate from different species. In this s...

Natural phytochemicals and their derivatives are good drug candidates for anticancer therapeutic approaches against multiple targets. We report here the initial findings from our studies on the anticancer properties of the leaves of the medicinal plant Sesbania grandiflora. In the current study, five different solvent fractions from the leaves of S. grandiflora were tested on cancer cell lines ...

The transition to selfing in Capsella rubella accompanies its recent divergence from the ancestral outcrossing C. grandiflora species about 100,000 years ago. Whether the change in mating system was accompanied by the evolution of additional reproductive barriers that enforced species divergence remained unknown. Here, we show that C. rubella and C. grandiflora are reproductively separated by a...

BACKGROUND Duabanga grandiflora or known in Malaysia as Berembang Bukit, Megawasih, or Pedada Bukit, is a native plant of the Southeast Asian countries. In this study, the anti-viral properties of D. grandiflora were investigated. METHODS The D. grandiflora leaf extracts were obtained with ethyl acetate, hexane, and ethanol as solvents and labelled 37 leaf ethyl acetate (37 L EA), 37 leaf hex...

Estragole (EG) is biosynthesized in herbs including anise, basil, bay, tarragon, fennel and marjoram, and is thought to be a useful biomass for the food and health industries. Moreover, the metabolites from estragole are useful intermediates in organic synthetic chemistry. However, estragole has been transformed only by chemical methods, and no biocatalysts have been reported. In this paper, we...

Nitric Oxide (NO) can autoregulate its own formation by feedback inhibition of the inducible Nitric Oxide Synthase (iNOS). Modulation of biosynthesis or activity of NO results in amelioration if pathogenesis of experimental arthritis. However, little is known about feedback mechanism on NO generation in response to carrageenan induced paw oedema and adjuvantinduced arthritis. In the present stu...

Mesorhizobium species are the main microsymbionts associated with the medicinal or sand-fixation plants Astragalus membranaceus and Caragana intermedia (AC) in temperate regions of China, while all the Mesorhizobium strains isolated from each of these plants could nodulate both of them. However, Rhizobium yanglingense strain CCBAU01603 could nodulate AC plants and it's a high efficiency symbiot...

Lectins are comprised of a large family of proteins capable of the specific and reversible recognition of carbohydrates. Legume lectins, the most studied plant lectins, show high structural similarity, but with modifications that imply a variation in the intensity of some biological activities. In this work, the primary and tertiary structures of Canavalia grandiflora (ConGF) were determined. C...

In the Bateson-Dobzhansky-Muller model of genetic incompatibilities post-zygotic gene-flow barriers arise by fixation of novel alleles at interacting loci in separated populations. Many such incompatibilities are polymorphic in plants, implying an important role for genetic drift or balancing selection in their origin and evolution. Here we show that NPR1 and RPP5 loci cause a genetic incompati...

The South American water primroses, Ludwigia grandiflora (Michx.) Greuter & Burdet, L. grandiflora subsp. hexapetala (Hook. & Arn.) G.L. Nesom & Kartesz, Ludwigia peploides (Kunth) P.H. Raven, and L. p. subsp. montevidensis (Spreng.) P.H. Raven (Onagraceae, Section Oligospermum), have become invasive in several watersheds of the United States and Europe. Surveys were carried out in center-east ...