There is a growing interest in the use of natural products like herbs, spices and plant extracts in the human food and animal feed industries. Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi from the Labiatae family is one of the fifty fundamental herbs of traditional Chinese medicine is thus used to treat a number of health disorders for over two thousand years. It is also called baical or chinese scutellaria ...

A number of seaweed species are used as traditional foods and medicine in different parts of the world, including Asian countries. However, very few data on the anti-melanogenic effect of seaweed have been published. Undaria pinnatifida (Dolmiyeok), a brown alga, is a traditional food in Jeju Island, the southern regions of the Korea peninsula. In this study, ethylacetate extracts of U. pinnati...

Brown algae and its carotenoids have been shown to have a positive influence on obesity and its comorbidities. This study evaluated the effect of Undaria pinnatifida and fucoxanthin on biochemical, physiological and inflammation markers related to obesity and on the expression of genes engaged on white adipose tissue lipid metabolism in a murine model of diet-induced obesity. The treatments imp...

Fucoidan, a sulfated polysaccharide purified from brown algae, has a variety of immune-modulation effects, such as promoting activation of dendritic cells (DCs), natural killer (NK) cells and T cells, and enhancing anti-viral and anti-tumor responses. However, the immune-modulatory effect of fucoidan from different seaweed extracts has not been thoroughly analyzed and compared. We analyzed fuco...

Gene duplication could be beneficial by functional division but might increase the risk of genetic load. The dynamics of duplicated paralogs number could involve recombination, positive selection, and functional divergence. Duplication of DIHYDROFLAVONOL 4-REDUCTASE (DFR) has been reported in several organisms and may have been retained by escape from adaptive conflict (EAC). In this study, we ...

Introduction – Scutellaria lateriflora, commonly known as skullcap, is used as an ingredient in numerous herbal products. Unfortunately, it has occasionally been adulterated with Teucrium canadense or T. chamaedrys, commonly known as germander, which contains potentially hepatotoxic diterpenes. Chromatographic profiles of the phenolic components provide a means of distinguishing between these p...

Based on a BoxBehnken design,response surface methodology was used to optimize the effects of processing parameters of extraction from Scutellaria barbata on total alkaloids yield. Three independent variables such as extraction time (X1), liquid-solid ratio (X2) and ultrasonic frequency (X3) were study. The P-value indicated that both extraction time (X1) and ultrasonic frequency (X3) had signi...

Metabolic syndrome is described as a group of risk factors in which at least three unhealthy medical conditions, including obesity, high blood sugar, hypertension or dyslipidemia occur simultaneously in a patient. These conditions raise the risk for diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular diseases. Many recent studies have focused on herbal remedies and their pharmacological effects on metabolic s...

Perchlorate and iodide concentrations were determined in brown (Undaria pinnatifida and Laminaria japonica) and red (Porphyra sp.) edible seaweeds, which are commonly consumed by Korean people, with the use of ion chromatography, coupled with a tandem mass spectrometer. Seaweeds (i.e., good sources of iodine) are among the most important plant life in the ocean and commonly consumed as food and...