Castor bean is an important oil-producing plant in the Euphorbiaceae family. Its high-quality oil contains up to 90% of the unusual fatty acid ricinoleate, which has many industrial and medical applications. Castor bean seeds also contain ricin, a highly toxic Type 2 ribosome-inactivating protein, which has gained relevance in recent years due to biosafety concerns. In order to gain knowledge o...

We report on the investigation of the nonlinear optical properties of castor oil using the Z-scan technique. Nonlinear refraction and absorption measurements were performed for two different laser wavelengths, 514 and 810 nm, in the CW regime, and for 810 nm in femtosecond regime. The CW results showed that castor oil has a large negative nonlinear refractive index n2 = -3.2 x 10 cm/W for the l...

A clinical trial of castor oil in overdoses of lipophilic drugs gave a strong clinical impression that it was effective in speeding up recovery. Therefore, animal experiments were undertaken to confirm that castor oil acts as a ligand in Ethchlorvynol poisoning and that its use reduces coma time. Serial serum levels of Ethchlorvynol were obtained from dogs given Ethchlorvynol 150 mg/kg alone, a...

Neurogenesis in Drosophila and mammals requires the precise integration of spatial and temporal cues. In Drosophila, embryonic neural progenitors (neuroblasts) sequentially express the transcription factors Hunchback, Kruppel, Pdm1/Pdm2 (Pdm) and Castor as they generate a stereotyped sequence of neuronal and glial progeny. Hunchback and Kruppel specify early temporal identity in two posterior n...

AIM To describe birthing outcomes among women who consumed castor oil cocktail as part of a freestanding birth center labor induction protocol. METHODS De-identified data from birth logs and electronic medical records were entered into SPSS Statistics 22.0 for analysis for all women who received the castor oil cocktail (n=323) to induce labor between January 2008 and May 2015 at a birth cente...

We have examined the effect of bithorax complex genes on the expression of castor gene. During the embryonic stages 12-15, both Ultrabithorax and abdominal-A regulated the castor gene expression negatively, whereas Abdominal-B showed a positive correlation with the castor gene expression according to real-time PCR. To investigate whether ABD-B protein directly interacts with the castor gene, el...

Castor (Ricinus communis L.) is an important non-edible oilseed crop that can potentially be used as feedstock for biodiesel production. There are 1033 accessions in the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) castor germplasm collection. The range of oil content in these accessions has never been surveyed. For exploiting castor as a feedstock for biodiesel production, the entire USDA ca...

Sena-Graph syrup has recently been formulated by an Iranian pharmaceutical company for being used in bowel evacuation before radiography, colonoscopy and surgery. This study compares the efficacy, adverse effects and patient compliance of two bowel preparation regimens with castor oil and Sena-Graph syrup in of outpatients for Intravenous Urography (IVU). One hundred and fourteen consecutive ou...

This study was undertaken to evaluate the antidiarrhoeal activity of 3, 7, 4'-trihydroxy-3'-(8″-acetoxy-7″-methyloctyl)-5, 6-dimethoxyflavone, a flavonoid isolated from the stem bark of Stereospermum kunthianum. The antidiarrhoeal activity was evaluated using rodent models with diarrhoea. The normal intestinal transit, castor oil-induced intestinal transit and castor oil-induced diarrhoea tests...

The castor plant Ricinus communis L., Euphorbiaceae produces seeds containing a unique oil. Castor oil is the only commodity vegetable oil that contains significant amounts of hydroxy fatty acid. This fatty acid is ricinoleic acid (12-hydroxy oleic acid) (Fig. 1) and it comprises up to 90% of the total fatty acid (FA) content of castor oil. Due to the physical and chemical properties imparted b...