Food insecurity is a major issue in current scenario where a large section of mankind is at risk of insufficient diet. As food productivity has its limits, the prospecting of unutilized or underutilized flora as food candidates is collectively recognized as a sustainable option. In the past decade, a number of obscure plants have been identified to be rich in dietary components and deemed fit f...

Seaweeds survive in marine waters with high sulfate concentration compared to those living at freshwater habitats. The cell wall polymer of Gracilaria spp. which supplies more than 50% of the world agar is heavily sulfated. Since sulfation reduces the agar quality, it is interesting to investigate the effects of sulfate deprivation on the sulfate contents of seaweed and agar, as well as the met...

Indole ahloids of Vinca species are valued greatly in medical sciences, one reason being for their use as powerful anticancer agents. There are four species of Vinca in Iran: V. rosea, V. major, V. minor and V. herbacea. In previous investigations, we found that these plants have considerable alkaloid similarity (58.8- 75%). Therefore, chromosomic and electrophuretic studies followed after i...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Leishmaniasis is a protozoan parasitic disease which is transmitted by the female Phlebotomus sand fly and is prevalent in four continents.The first-choice treatment for the leishmaniasis is pentavalent antimonials, which are potentially toxic and often ineffective and use of them exhibit therapeutic failure. These pharmaceutical problems point towards the need to deve...

Although coral reef health across the globe is declining as a result of anthropogenic impacts, relatively little is known of how environmental variability influences reef organisms other than corals and fish. Sponges are an important component of coral reef fauna that perform many important functional roles and changes in their abundance and diversity as a result of environmental change has the...

Salicornia brachiata is an extreme halophyte that grows luxuriantly in coastal marshes. Previously, we have reported isolation and characterization of ESTs from Salicornia with large number of novel/unknown salt-responsive gene sequences. In this study, we have selected a novel salt-inducible gene SbSI-2 (Salicornia brachiata salt-inducible-2) for functional characterization. Bioinformatics ana...

The germination of three cerrado herbaceous species: Bidens gardneri, Vernonia herbacea (Asteraceae) and Psychotria barbiflora (Rubiaceae) was studied using seeds stored in cerrado soil and in refrigerator at 4°C. The field experiment was carried out at a preserved area of cerrado, the Reserva Biológica e Estação Experimental de Mogi-Guaçu, State of São Paulo, Brazil. The soil was collected in ...