繁缕属植物化学成分研究进展

繁缕属植物主要含有环肽、黄酮、甾醇、挥发油等化学成分。由于其明确的抗茵、抗病毒及抗肿瘤活性近年来日益受到研究人员的重视。     

抗菌环肽的研究进展

鉴于禽类细菌性疾病对养禽业健康发展的不利影响,人们急需开发改善细菌耐药性的新型敏感性抗菌药物,使其达到治疗细菌性疾病的目的。环肽较线性肽因具有更多的生物活性和医药价值而成为抗菌药物的候选者。主要从天然抗菌环肽的发现、抗菌环肽的合成、环肽类抗菌药物的应用现状三个方面进行综述,期望有利于读者进一步了解抗菌环肽的研究概况,为开发新型抗菌环肽药物提供帮助。     

植物环肽及其可能的生物合成途径

植物环肽是一个庞大的小分子天然产物家族,通常由4—10个氨基酸残基组合而成。该类化合物广泛存在于全球多种植物的根、茎、枝、叶及种子中,中草药中也时有发现。由于对其生物合成途径及机理研究较少,环肽分子的利用价值尚未得到有效的开发。和常见的非环状基因编码的多肽或蛋白质相比,环肽结构更为复杂。本文将对植物环肽的生物合成途径及其机理做初步探讨。     

生理活性海洋环肽类研究近况

海洋肽类(主要是环肽),由于具有显著的生理活性,引起了人们的很大关注。本文综述了近几年生理活性海洋环肽类的研究概况,包括发现、结构、生理活性等。     

海藻肽的化学结构特征和活性作用研究进展

海藻中的肽类化合物具有显著的生物活性和药理作用,对其氨基酸序列及活性作用的研究已经取得了一些重要进展。发现的海藻肽类化合物并确定其化学结构式的主要有二肽、环肽和脂肽,这些肽类化合物具有抗肿瘤、降血压、降血脂、抗凝血、促进神经细胞分化、抗氧化、抗菌和抗病毒等生物活性。预测海藻肽类化合物在疑难病症的治疗上将发挥重要作用。     

新型抗菌肽——表面活性素、伊枯草菌素和丰原素

表面活性素（surfactin）、伊枯草菌素（iturin）和丰原素（fengycin）是一类主要由革兰阳性芽胞杆菌通过非核糖体合成途径产生的抗菌肽,一般是由1个β-羟基脂肪酸与7～10个氨基酸肽链以酰胺键连接而成的环肽,具有抗细菌、抗真菌、抗病毒、抗肿瘤等生物活性,在医疗方面具有良好的应用前景。目前,人们对这3种新型抗菌肽在医药领域中的研究进展所知甚少,故本文对其发现历史、结构特点、作用机制、生物合成和应用价值进行阐述,为后续研究提供借鉴。     

紫菀根的结构与主要药用成分积累研究

为揭示紫菀根的结构、主要药用成分积累部位和含量,用石蜡切片法研究不同发育阶段根的结构、组织化学法定位三萜皂苷和黄酮类成分的积累部位、HPLC法测定根中紫菀酮、槲皮素和山奈酚的含量。结果表明,紫菀根的初生结构包括表皮、皮层和维管柱。次生结构包括外皮层、皮层和维管组织,其中分泌道位于皮层内侧,数量与韧皮部束一致,随着根的增粗,中央分化出髓部。三萜皂苷成分在韧皮部和皮层内侧积累较多;黄酮类成分积累于皮层和髓部。紫菀根下部的紫菀酮含量高于上部,槲皮素和山萘酚仅为上部的1/3。因此,建议加工时保留下部细根,实现资源综合利用。     

青霉属真菌次级代谢产物的结构类型及其药用活性的研究进展

青霉属(Penicillium)真菌属于腐生类真菌,是自然界中一类重要的分解者。其可以产生多种多样的次级代谢产物。这些结构新颖、功能特殊的次级代谢产物在抗菌、抗氧化、抗肿瘤等药物开发中发挥重要作用,主要由聚酮类、生物碱、萜类、大环内酯等化学结构类型组成。本文综述了青霉属真菌次级代谢产物的结构类型以及丰富的生物药用活性,该内容可为后续青霉属真菌新型天然药物的开发提供研究思路。     

紫菀属化学成分及药理活性研究进展

紫菀属所含化学成分主要是三萜皂甙 ,此外还含其它萜类、肽类、香豆素、甾醇等 ;其中一些成分具有抗瘤 ,抗菌 ,消炎等活性。本文对其近 2 0多年来国内外学者分离到的化学成分及其药理活性的研究结果作一综述 ,为该属植物资源的进一步研究和开发提供参考。     

千针万线草环肽H的结构

从云南民间药物千针万线草的新鲜根中又得到２个环肽成分,其中１个为新环肽,命名为千针万线草环肽Ｈ。经光谱技术及化学方法证明其结构为ｃｙｃｌｏ,另一为一已知的环肽化合物。     

芥子油苷在植物-生物环境关系中的作用

芥子油苷是一类含氮、含硫的植物次生代谢物质,主要分布于白花菜目的十字花科植物。芥子油苷及其降解产物具有多种生化活性,近年来人们更多地关注芥子油苷代谢与其它物质代谢途径的相互联系以及与植物生存环境的相互作用。介绍了芥子油苷及其分布、芥子油苷-黑芥子酶系统以及由芥子油苷介导的植物对昆虫、病原体的防御作用和植物与植物之间的化感作用的研究概况。     

甘草属植物化学和药理学研究进展

本文对近年发表的有关甘草属植物化学和药理学研究文献进行了综述,其中包括了得自本属植物的新的黄酮类、三萜类成分。文中以表格形式列出了各类成分的名称、结构、物理常数和植物来源,并对某些成分的生理活性作了归纳。     

An integrated database of flavonoids

Flavonoids are polyphenolic compounds that occur ubiquitously in foods of plant origin. Some of these molecules exhibit various physiological activities. Among existing drugs, there are a huge number of compounds bearing a flavonoid-related skeleton. Because of the relevance for pharmaceutical research, it would be beneficial to collect these compounds into a database. Recently, various databases of chemicals were compiled to help biological and/or chemical research, but no comprehensive database of flavonoids with chemical structures and physicochemical parameters, supposedly related to their activity, is available yet. The aim of this research was to merge the information about flavonoids of plant origin and flavonoids used as medicines into a database. Moreover, predictions of activities against various targets were performed using a virtual screening procedure to demonstrate a possible application of the database for pharmaceutical research.     

三萜皂苷生物合成相关糖基转移酶研究进展

三萜皂苷具有独特的化学性质和丰富的药理活性,在医药、保健品、化妆品、食品添加剂、农业等方面被广泛应用.尿苷二磷酸(UDP)依赖的糖基转移酶(UGTs)是催化三萜皂苷生成的关键酶,对三萜皂苷的结构及其药理活性多样性的形成有重要作用.文中基于UGTs来源及受体底物结构类型对参与植物三萜皂苷生物合成的UGTs进行了综述,并展...     

NMR as a tool for elucidating the structures of circular and knotted proteins

Cyclotides are a recently discovered family of mini-proteins that have a head-to-tail cyclised backbone stabilized by a knotted arrangement of three disulfide bonds. They have a wide range of biological activities, including uterotonic, anti-bacterial, anti-HIV, and anti-tumour activity but their insecticidal activities suggest that their natural function is in plant defense. They are exceptionally resistant to chemical, enzymatic and thermal treatments because of their unique structural scaffold. This stability and resistance to proteolysis makes them a potentially valuable protein engineering tool at the interface of chemistry and biology: they have the structure of proteins but the stability and biophysical properties of organic molecules. In this review the role of NMR in defining the structures of cyclotides is described.     

Pharmacological properties of plant sterols in vivo and in vitro observations

Plant sterols have been investigated as one of the safe potential alternative methods in lowering plasma cholesterol levels. Several human studies have shown that plant sterols/stanols significantly reduce plasma total and LDL cholesterol. In this article, pharmacological characteristics of plant sterols/stanols have been summarized and discussed. In particular, experimental data that demonstrate the effects of dietary phytosterols on lipid metabolism and development of atherosclerotic lesions have been critically reviewed. Despite their similar chemical structures, phytosterols and cholesterol differ markedly from each other in regard to their pharmacological characteristics including intestinal absorption and metabolic fate. Compared to cholesterol, plant sterols have poor intestinal absorption. The most and best studied effects of plant sterols are their inhibition of intestinal cholesterol absorption. Other biological activities of phytosterols such as effects on lecithin:cholesterol acyltransferase activity, bile acid synthesis, oxidation and uptake of lipoproteins, hepatic and lipoprotein lipase activities and coagulation system have been linked to their anti-atherogenic properties. Moreover, evidence for beneficial effects of plant sterols on disorders such as cutaneous xanthomatosis, colon cancer and prostate hyperplasia has been discussed. Finally, the potential adverse effects of plant sterols as well as pathophysiology of hereditary sitosterolemia are also reviewed. In conclusion, more pharmacokinetic data are needed to better understand metabolic fate of plant sterols/stanols and their fatty acid esters as well as their interactions with other nutraceutical/pharmaceutical agents.     

Basidiomycetes: A new source of secondary metabolites.

The area of natural products research is the most rapidly growing field of organic chemistry, due to the great technical developments in the isolation and identification techniques. Today, near to one million natural products -isolated from the most diverse living things- are known. Microorganisms are among the least-studied of these. Nevertheless, they offer large possibilities for the discovery of new structures and biological activities. Among the microorganisms, the Basidiomycetes present a production capacity and a range of biologically active metabolites, which have scarcely been investigated. The wide spectrum of natural products with biological activity produced by Basidiomycetes includes antimicrobial agents, antifungal, antiviral and cytotoxic activities, enzymes, plant growth regulators and flavors. These metabolites are generally grouped by their chemical origin, and the relationship between chemical structure and the different biological activities reported. The main objective of this review is to bring an updated revision of the numerous and interesting biosynthetic pathways from basidiomycetes.     

Structural determination of complex natural products by quantum mechanical calculations of <Superscript>13</Superscript>C NMR chemical shifts: development of a parameterized protocol for terpenes

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is one of the most important tools for determining the structures of organic molecules. Despite the advances made in this technique, revisions of erroneously established structures for natural products are still commonly published in the literature. In this context, the prediction of chemical shifts through ab initio and density functional theory (DFT) calculations has become a very powerful tool for assisting with the structural determination of complex organic molecules. In this work, we present the development of a protocol for ¹³C chemical shift calculations of terpenes, a class of natural products that are widely distributed among plant species and are very important due to their biological and pharmacological activities. This protocol consists of GIAO-DFT calculations of chemical shifts and the application of a parameterized scaling factor in order to ensure accurate structural determination of this class of natural products. The application of this protocol to a set of five terpenes yielded accurate calculated chemical shifts, showing that this is a very attractive tool for the calculation of complex organic structures such as terpenes.     

Review of problems of correlations of structure and function in cells

Many of the correlations in cytology between structure and function compare the metabolism of subcellular fractions with the electron microscopy of the same tissues. Conclusions from subcellular fractionation have generally been derived on the assumption that killing the animal or plant, homogenisation, centrifugation and extraction of the tissues, do not affect the activities of the biochemical structures examined nor their distribution in the subcellular fractions; this assumption has never been tested. There is insufficient literature on the effects of reagents used in histology, immunocytochemistry and electron microscopy, on chemical activities, their distribution, or their visibility in sections. The artifacts of electron microscopy, such as shrinkage and precipitation, are widely recognised but not taken into account sufficiently when structures are examined. No attempts have been made to explain the two dimensional geometry of many 'unit' membranes, nor how a cytoskeleton can cause intracellular movements. Particular examples, such as the alleged location of oxidative phosphorylation along the mitochondrial cristae, the presence of biochemical ribosomal and lysosomal activities without the appearance of ribosomes and lysosomes, and intracellular movements in the believed presence of a cytoskeleton, are given to illustrate the difficulties of widely believed correlations between structure and function in cells.     

Integrated view of plant metabolic defense with particular focus on chewing herbivores

Success of plants largely depends on their ability to defend against herbivores. Since emergence of the first voracious consumers, plants maintained adapting their structures and chemistry to escape from extinction. The constant pressure was further accelerated by adaptation of herbivores to plant defenses, which all together sparked the rise of a chemical empire comprised of thousands of specialized metabolites currently found in plants. Metabolic diversity in the plant kingdom is truly amazing, and although many plant metabolites have already been identified, a large number of potentially useful chemicals remain unexplored in plant bio-resources. Similarly, biosynthetic routes for plant metabolites involve many enzymes, some of which still wait for identification and biochemical characterization. Moreover, regulatory mechanisms that control gene expression and enzyme activities in specialized metabolism of plants are scarcely known. Finally, understanding of how plant defense chemicals exert their toxicity and/or repellency against herbivores remains limited to typical examples, such as proteinase inhibitors, cyanogenic compounds and nicotine. In this review, we attempt summarizing the current status quo in metabolic defense of plants that is predominantly based on the survey of ubiquitous examples of plant interactions with chewing herbivores.