Castor (Ricinus communis L.) is a fast growing plant of marginal and moderately saline land widely spread throughout tropical regions. It is cultivated at arid coastal sandy belt and inland waste land of Pakistan for obtaining oil from its seeds, which being of medicinal importance is an economical commodity. Facing a great shortage of mineral diesel, scientists are nowadays actively working fo...

Ribulose 1,5-diphosphate carboxylase was detected in extracts of germinating castor bean (Ricinus communis var. Hale) endosperms. This is the first report of this enzyme in a nonphotosynthetic (no chlorophyll) plant tissue. Radioactive 3-phosphoglyceric acid has been identified as the principle product resulting from the enzymatic condensation of (14)C-bicarbonate and ribulose-1,5-diP in endosp...

Plant-specific GRAS transcription factors play important roles in regulating growth, development, and stress responses. Castor beans (Ricinus communis) are important non-edible oilseed plants, cultivated worldwide for its seed oils and its adaptability to growth conditions. In this study, we identified and characterized a total of 48 GRAS genes based on the castor bean genome. Combined with phy...

Casbene is a macrocyclic diterpene hydrocarbon that is produced in young castor bean (Ricinus communis L.) seedlings after they are exposed to Rhizopus stolonifer or other fungi. The activities of enzymes that participate in casbene biosynthesis were measured in cell-free extracts of 67-hour castor bean seedlings (a) that had been exposed to R. stolonifer spores 18 hours prior to the preparatio...

Aquaporins (AQPs) are a class of integral membrane proteins that facilitate the passive transport of water and other small solutes across biological membranes. Castor bean (Ricinus communis L., Euphobiaceae), an important non-edible oilseed crop, is widely cultivated for industrial, medicinal and cosmetic purposes. Its recently available genome provides an opportunity to analyze specific gene f...

WRKY proteins comprise one of the largest transcription factor families in plants and form key regulators of many plant processes. This study presents the characterization of 58 WRKY genes from the castor bean (Ricinus communis L., Euphorbiaceae) genome. Compared with the automatic genome annotation, one more WRKY-encoding locus was identified and 20 out of the 57 predicted gene models were man...

Castor bean is one of the crops with potential to provide raw material for production of oils for biodiesel. This species possess adaptive mechanisms for maintaining the water status when subjected to drought stress. A better understanding these mechanisms under field conditions can unravel the survival strategies used by this species. This study aimed to compare the physiological adaptations o...

conclusions intraventricular hemorrhage followed by comatose state is a rare finding of the castor bean seed ingestion. the patient’s condition improved dramatically after ffp transfusion. introduction castor bean seed is used to control some medical conditions including diabetes mellitus due to popular belief in its effectiveness. however it may cause severe poisoning in humans and animals and...