glutathione transferases are multifunctional proteins involved in several diverse intracellular events such as primary and secondary metabolisms, signaling and stress metabolism. these enzymes have been subdivided into eight classes in plants. the phi class, being plant specific, is the most represented. in the present study, based on the sequences available at genbank, different primers were d...

The ubiC gene of Escherichia coli encodes chorismate pyruvatelyase, an enzyme that converts chorismate into 4-hydroxybenzoate (4HB) and is not normally present in plants. The ubiC gene was expressed in Nicofiana tabacum L. plants under control of a constitutive plant promoter. The gene product was targeted into the plastid by fusing it to the sequence for the chloroplast transit peptide of the ...

Glutathione transferases are multifunctional proteins involved in several diverse intracellular events such as primary and secondary metabolisms, signaling and stress metabolism. These enzymes have been subdivided into eight classes in plants. The Phi class, being plant specific, is the most represented. In the present study, based on the sequences available at GenBank, different primers were d...

Filamentous fungi are unique organisms-rivaled only by actinomycetes and plants-in producing a wide range of natural products called secondary metabolites. These compounds are very diverse in structure and perform functions that are not always known. However, most secondary metabolites are produced after the fungus has completed its initial growth phase and is beginning a stage of development r...

Natural product chemistry is a branch of organic chemistry that touches upon many other fields of science, especially applied sciences such as medicine, agriculture, and engineering. It is fundamentally a basic science, involved in the discovery, characterization and cataloging of new chemical substances found in nature. Among other basic scientists, biologists and ecologists recognized some ti...

A precursor is a compound which is transformed to a class of functional molecules within short steps. It is an important process in the production of natural drugs to decide whether a given compound is a precursor or not. We present two strategies to select precursor compounds in the secondary metabolism of terpenoids: one is to find the packing of basic molecules in the given cyclic structure,...

Recent bacterial (meta)genome sequencing efforts suggest the existence of an enormous untapped reservoir of natural-product-encoding biosynthetic gene clusters in the environment. Here we use the pyro-sequencing of PCR amplicons derived from both nonribosomal peptide adenylation domains and polyketide ketosynthase domains to compare biosynthetic diversity in soil microbiomes from around the glo...

Secondary metabolites (idiolites) are structurally diverse and unusual, generally are produced in mixtures with other members of the same chemical family, and usually are formed at low specific growth rates. In batch cultures, processes leading to the production of idiolites are often sequential; the cultures exhibit a distinct growth phase (trophophase) followed by a production phase (idiophas...

Here, the growth-differentiation balance hypothesis (GDBH) was tested by quantifying temporal variation in the relative growth rate (RGR), net assimilation rate (NAR), and phenylpropanoid concentrations of two willow species (Salix sericea and Salix eriocephala) across five fertility levels. Initially, RGR increased and total phenylpropanoids declined (although every individual phenolic did not...

While the biological functions of most of the secondary metabolites made by streptomycetes are not known, it is inconceivable that they do not play an adaptive ecological role. The biosynthesis of secondary metabolites under laboratory conditions usually occurs in a growth phase or developmentally controlled manner, but is also influenced by a wide variety of environmental and physiological sig...