The Ranunculales are a hyperdiverse lineage in many aspects of their phenotype, including growth habit, floral and leaf morphology, reproductive mode, and specialized metabolism. Many Ranunculales species, such as opium poppy and goldenseal, have a high medicinal value. In addition, the order includes a large number of commercially important ornamental plants, such as columbines and larkspurs. The phylogenetic position of the order with respect to monocots and core eudicots and the diversity within this lineage make the Ranunculales an excellent group for studying evolutionary processes by comparative studies. Lately, the phylogeny of Ranunculales was revised, and genetic and genomic resources were developed for many species, allowing comparative analyses at the molecular scale. Here, we review the literature on the resources for genetic manipulation and genome sequencing, the recent phylogeny reconstruction of this order, and its fossil record. Further, we explain their habitat range and delve into the diversity in their floral morphology, focusing on perianth organ identity, floral symmetry, occurrences of spurs and nectaries, sexual and pollination systems, and fruit and dehiscence types. The Ranunculales order offers a wealth of opportunities for scientific exploration across various disciplines and scales, to gain novel insights into plant biology for researchers and plant enthusiasts alike.

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Background Herbal tea drinks, different from classical Camellia beverages, are a wide variety of herbal drinks consumed for therapeutic purposes or health promotion. Herbal tea is widely consumed in Guangxi. However, the documentation on the plants for herbal tea and their related health benefits is still limited. Methods An ethnobotanical survey was conducted in 52 villages and 21 traditional markets in Guangxi from 2016 to 2021. Semi-structured interviews, key informant interviews, and structured questionnaires were applied to obtain ethnobotanical information of herbal tea, in which 463 informants had participated. Relative frequency of citation (RFC) and cultural food significance index (CFSI) were used to evaluate the most culturally significant herbal tea plants, and informant consensus factor (ICF) was applied to assess the agreement among informants. Results This study recorded 155 herbal tea species belonging to 49 families. The most commonly used parts included leaf (27.61%), whole plant (22.09%), branch and leaf (19.02%), and flower (13.50%). The most frequent preparation method of herbal tea was decoction. Herbal tea was very popular in Guangxi, attributing to its therapeutic value, special odor, and good taste. There are 41 health benefits classified into eight categories. Among them, clearing heat was the most medicinal effects. Local people had high consistency in tonic, removing cold and cough, improving blood circulation, and clearing heat away. Based on CFSI values of each species, the most culturally significant herbal tea species were Siraitia grosvenorii (Swingle) C. Jeffrey ex A. M. Lu & Zhi Y. Zhang, Plantago asiatica L., Gynostemma pentaphyllum (Thunb.) Makino, Zingiber officinale Roscoe, Pholidota chinensis Lindl., and Morus alba L. Conclusion Herbal tea is a valuable heritage that carries the local people's traditional knowledge, like health care and religious belief. The recorded herbal tea species in this study possess tremendous potential for local economic development in the future. Further research on efficacy evaluation and product development of herbal tea species is necessary.

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In recent years, natural products, which originate from plants, animals, and fungi, together with their bioactive compounds have been intensively explored and studied for their therapeutic potentials for various diseases such as cardiovascular, diabetes, hypertension, reproductive, cancer, and neurodegenerative diseases. Neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease, Parkinson's disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis are characterized by the progressive dysfunction and loss of neuronal structure and function that resulted in the neuronal cell death. Since the multifactorial pathological mechanisms are associated with neurodegeneration, targeting multiple mechanisms of actions and neuroprotection approach, which involves preventing cell death and restoring the function to damaged neurons, could be promising strategies for the prevention and therapeutic of neurodegenerative diseases. Natural products have emerged as potential neuroprotective agents for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases. This review focused on the therapeutic potential of natural products and their bioactive compounds to exert a neuroprotective effect on the pathologies of neurodegenerative diseases.

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Secondary metabolites are bioactive substances with diverse chemical structures. Depending on the ecological environment within which they are living, higher plants use different combinations of secondary metabolites for adaptation (e.g., defense against attacks by herbivores or pathogenic microbes). This suggests that the similarity in metabolite content is applicable to assess phylogenic similarity of higher plants. However, such a chemical taxonomic approach has limitations of incomplete metabolomics data. We propose an approach for successfully classifying 216 plants based on their known incomplete metabolite content. Structurally similar metabolites have been clustered using the network clustering algorithm DPClus. Plants have been represented as binary vectors, implying relations with structurally similar metabolite groups, and classified using Ward's method of hierarchical clustering. Despite incomplete data, the resulting plant clusters are consistent with the known evolutional relations of plants. This finding reveals the significance of metabolite content as a taxonomic marker. We also discuss the predictive power of metabolite content in exploring nutritional and medicinal properties in plants. As a byproduct of our analysis, we could predict some currently unknown species-metabolite relations.

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Benzylisoquinoline alkaloids are a large group of plant-specialized metabolites displaying an array of biological and pharmacological properties associated with numerous structural scaffolds and diverse functional group modification. N-Methylation is one of the most common tailoring reactions, yielding tertiary and quaternary pathway intermediates and products. Two N-methyltransferases accepting (i) early 1-benzylisoquinoline intermediates possessing a secondary amine and leading to the key branch-point intermediate (S)-reticuline and (ii) downstream protoberberines containing a tertiary amine and forming quaternary intermediates destined for phthalideisoquinolines and antimicrobial benzo[c]phenanthridines were previously characterized. We report the isolation and characterization of a phylogenetically related yet functionally distinct N-methyltransferase (NMT) from opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) that primarily accepts 1-benzylisoquinoline and aporphine substrates possessing a tertiary amine. The preferred substrates were the R and S conformers of reticuline and the aporphine (S)-corytuberine, which are proposed intermediates in the biosynthesis of magnoflorine, a quaternary aporphine alkaloid common in plants. Suppression of the gene encoding reticuline N-methyltransferase (RNMT) using virus-induced gene silencing in opium poppy resulted in a significant decrease in magnoflorine accumulation and a concomitant increase in corytuberine levels in roots. RNMT transcript levels were also most abundant in roots, in contrast to the distribution of transcripts encoding other NMTs, which occur predominantly in aerial plant organs. The characterization of a third functionally unique NMT involved in benzylisoquinoline alkaloid metabolism will facilitate the establishment of structure-function relationships among a large group of related enzymes.

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Ülke: Elsewhere

Taxon: Cocculus laurifolius

Referans: Takeda

Kaynak: James A. Duke

Ülke: Malaysia

Taxon: Cocculus laurifolius

Referans: Woi.2

Kaynak: James A. Duke

Ülke: Elsewhere

Taxon: Cocculus laurifolius

Referans: Takeda

Kaynak: James A. Duke