Natural Products Articles

Various hydrophilic polymers from synthetic origin such as methylcellulose, PEGs, HPMC as well as those from natural world such as guar gum, tragacanth, xanthan gum have been used to formulate oral sustained release formulations. Psyllium husk has the ability to swell 10-14 times of its original volume and form a hydrogel.

Seed oils of Gynandropsis gynandra, Impatiens balsamina, Celastrus paniculata, Embelia ribes and Mucuna pruriens were investigated for their anthelmintic property against Pheritima posthuma . Three concentrations (10, 50 and 100 mg/ml) of each oil were studied in a bioassay, which involved the determination of time of paralysis and time of death of the worm.

Melothria maderaspatana (Linn) Cogn, a plant drug of Siddha medicine, is an annual monoecious tendril climber, belonging to the family Cucurbitaceae, mostly prevalent in South India. It is commonly called Musumusukkai in Tamil. Preliminary phytochemical screening of the plant revealed the presence of phytochemical constituents such as coumarins, flavonoids.

Hybanthus enneaspermus Muell, belonging to family Violaceae, was investigated to evaluate in vitro antibacterial activity of aqueous, ethanolic, petroleum ether and chloroform extracts against Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Proteus mirabilis, Enterococcus faecalis and Staphylococcus aureus .

2,5-Disubstituted decahydroquinolines (DHQs) represent o­ne of the major classes of amphibian alkaloids. They have been detected in skin extracts of dendrobatid and mantelline frogs and bufonid toads, and for 5-epi-cis-275B' (16) and 5-epi-trans-275B (17) found in the extracts of virgin queens of a myrmicine ant. Detection of such DHQs in an ant, their first reported occurrence, strengthens a dietary hypothesis for the origin of the approximately 30 DHQs that have been detected in extracts of frog skin.

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Green plants and production systems that are most removed from conventional commercial food and feed crops are most likely to succeed.

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Many organisms are known to produce or sequester toxic compounds as a form of chemical defense. A classic example is illustrated in the relationship between the monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus (L.), and its larval food plant, the milkweed, Asclepias curassavica L.; monarch larvae feed o­n the milkweed and retain cardiac glycosides, found therein, in their body tissues, thereby conferring the adult butterfly unpalatable to potential bird predators. The zebra swallowtail butterfly, Eurytides marcellus (Cramer) (Papilionidae), is also known to sequester specific compounds from its larval food source, the North American paw paw tree, Asimina triloba (L.) Dunal (Annonaceae); however, the retained compounds, as reported previously, are innocuous flavonoid pigments that have no role in defense.

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Licorice herb has been widely used for many centuries in the cure of common illnesses, such as sore throat and dry cough. Recent studies have revealed that the healing properties of licorice components could be effective against a much wider spectrum of diseases, such as chronic hepatitis and HIV infection. However, excessive consumption of this natural agent may produce dangerous side effects, since the substances it contains can interfere with many metabolic pathways. Therefore, caution should be taken when using licorice in a chronic manner, or when larger doses than appropriate are being prescribed.For full article Click Here

A new solid tumor selective cytotoxic analogue of dolastatin 10 has been isolated from the marine cyanobacterium Symploca hydnoides, collected near Guam. This metabolite has been assigned the trivial name symplostatin 1. This discovery supports the proposal that many compounds isolated from the seahare Dolabella auricularia, the original source of the dolastatins, are of dietary origin.

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After many starts and stops, hype and disappointment, foreign protein expression in plants is now routine and biopharmaceuticals produced in green plants will soon be with us.

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