Plant alkaloids, one of the largest groups of natural products, provide many pharmacologically active compounds. Several genes in the biosynthetic pathways for scopolamine, nicotine, and berberine have been cloned, making the metabolic engineering of these alkaloids possible. Expression of two branching-point enzymes was engineered: putrescine N-methyltransferase (PMT) in transgenic plants of A...

Isolated, nick-translated Pvu II fragments of Nicotiana tabacum chloroplast DNA produce specific intra- and intergeneric hybridization signals with chloroplast DNA digests from several representatives of the Solanaceae. These data, along with similarities in restriction enzyme patterns, permit construction of physical maps for Nicotiana line 92 (a cytoplasmic substitution line), Atropa belladon...

the solanaceae plants produce a variety of interesting biologically active products including the steroid alkaloids solanidine, nicotine and tropane alkaloids. putrescine n-methyltransferase (pmt) is an enzyme that catalyses s-adenosylmethionine-dependent methylation of putrescine in one of the primary steps of nicotine and tropane alkaloids biosynthesis pathway. two tobacco members of the ap2/...

In vitro efficacy of methanolic extract of Atropa belladonna and its components scopolamine and atropine was assessed against Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) microplus. Five concentrations of the extract (1.25%, 2.5%, 5%, 10%, and 20%) were used whereas scopolamine and atropine were each tested at 0.1%. In adult immersion test, the extract was lethal to ticks at 20% concentration. The LC50 and LC95 v...

This investigation was carried out to improve the germination percentage and alkaloid 1 production in M seeds (irradiated seeds with 50, 80, 110 and 150 Gy) of Atropa belladonna L. by using and different concentrations of gibberellic acid (20,40,60,80,100 and 120 ppm). There was an increase in seed germination percentage by increasing gamma-ray doses until 150 Gy which gave 3 decrease in seed g...