Podophyllotoxin (PTOX) is an extremely important plant-derived natural product, of which derivatives, like etoposide and teniposide, have been widely applied in therapies for cancers and venereal wart. A durable, intense plant extraction of podophyllotoxin posed a severe pressure on wild resources; researchers consequently sought to explore new sources, like cultivation, plant cell or organ culture, and chemical synthesis. Understanding biosynthesis of PTOX is one of the basic necessary steps for standard cultivation of medicinal plants and metabolite engineering. An important progress has been made in this field during the last two decades, particularly in the last ten years. Although a number of reviews concerning the related topic have existed, we specifically deal with biosynthesis of podophyllotoxin with an emphasis on the literatures of the past decade, highlighting characterization of genes encoding synthetic enzymes and down-stream metabolism of PTOX. The present review focuses on several key biosynthesis processes, important metabolites, function of related enzymes, and characterization of cDNA encoding the enzymes. Finally, the author proposed a hypothetical biosynthetic scheme of podophyllotoxin and perspectives.
Plants, Medicinal ; metabolism ; Podophyllotoxin ; biosynthesis ; chemistry ; metabolism

Hormesis describes the low-dose stimulation and high-dose inhibition phenomena for all kind lives under toxicity environment. This paper generalized hormesis of medicinal plant on grow and metabolite after introducing the concept and study state of hormesis and analyzing hormesis mechanism and its significance. It points out that hormesis can be well used for medicinal plants growth, including increasing the metabolise, giving a dereaction for cultivated field chosen, guiding the agriculture management during the cultivation and improving the anti-stress.
Agriculture ; methods ; Plants, Medicinal ; growth & development ; metabolism

OBJECTIVETo estimate the heavy metal content in soil and selected medicinal plants procured from environmentally different sites of the same city.

METHODSSoil and plant samples of Abutilon indicum, Calotropis procera, Euphorbia hirta, Peristrophe bycaliculata, and Tinospora cordifolia were collected from 3 environmentally different sites of the city: heavy traffic area (HTA), industrial area (IA), and residential area (RA). Pb, Cd, Cr, and Ni were estimated in soil and plant samples by inductively coupled plasma emission spectrometry and compared.

RESULTSThe level of heavy metal was higher in soil than in plant parts studied. Accumulation of heavy metals varied from plant to plant. Pb was the highest in Calotropis procera root from HTA site and the lowest in Peristrophe bycaliculata whole plant from IA site. It was also lower in residential area than in heavy traffic area.

CONCLUSIONThe level of heavy metal content differed in the same medicinal plant collected from environmentally different sites of the same city. Thus, it reiterates our belief that every medicinal plant sample should be tested for contaminant load before processing it further for medication.

There exists many kinds and a huge number of terpenoid in medicinal plants, which show a wide range of pharmacological activities. 3-Hydroxy-3-metllylglutaryl coenzyme A reductase(HMGR) is a key rate-limiting enzyme in terpenoid biosynthetic pathway . HMGR plays an important role in the regulation of secondary metabolism of the terpenoid. The paper summarized the biological function and the catalytic mechanism of HMGR, the cloning and the structure of the gene as well as its research progress in some medicinal plants.
Hydroxymethylglutaryl CoA Reductases ; metabolism ; Plants, Medicinal ; enzymology ; Terpenes ; metabolism

Currently, the herbal prescription therapy for corresponding constitutional diseases is a common constitution regulating method. This method has an obvious effect in treating and regulating constitution-related diseases. However, for people who do not have disease, they prefer to regulate constitution with dietary therapy. In this paper, the researchers came up with a design method of constitution regulating and healthcare foods based on medicinal property combination mode of clinical empirical formulas. With "Yupinfeng San", a common formula for Qi-insufficiency constitution and specific endowment constitution, as the example for constitution regulating and healthcare foods, the researchers proved the effectiveness and rationality of healthcare food schemes in terms of the efficacy of single herb and the modern pharmacological study.
Diet ; Diet Therapy ; Humans ; Plants, Medicinal ; chemistry ; metabolism ; Prescriptions

Secondary metabolites are produced during the growth and development of plants along with the adaptation of outer environment, as a rule they are the main active ingredients in medicinal plants and ensure the quality of crude drugs. Since biogenesis is quite complex, the production and accumulation of secondary metabolites are influenced by various biotic and abiotic factors either from gene or environments, the complexity may affect quality control of crude drugs and utilization of the active ingredients. The thought and approach adopted in systems biology is a powerful tool to explore biology fully, along with the development of modern molecular biology and information biology, omics integration like genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics will bring new opportunities for the study of secondary metabolites of medicinal plant. It has great significance to apply this holistic and systematic method in researches on biosynthetic pathway, signal transduction, ecological environment and metabolic engineering of the formation of the secondary metabolites of medicinal plants, and in building secondary metabolite biosynthesis gene expression and regulation system model, in order to explain the origin of the active ingredients of medicinal plants, formation mechanism of the Chinese herbs, metabolic engineering effecting active ingredients of medicinal plants, and the rational exploitation and utilization of resources of medicinal plants systematically.
Models, Biological ; Models, Theoretical ; Plants, Medicinal ; metabolism ; Systems Biology ; methods

Artemisia annua also known as Qinghao, is a kind of traditional Chinese medicine. Its active ingredient is artemisinin, a sesquiterpene lactone compound with a peroxy bridging group structure. A. annua is an effective antimalarial drug. Artemisinin, a secondary metabolite in A. annua, can be induced by many physical and chemical factors, such as salinity, moisture, light, and plant hormones. Temperature, as an important growth factor, also has a great influence on the synthesis of artemisinin. This article aims to study the effect of high temperature on inducing artemisinin biosynthesis in A. annua. The A. annua seedlings were placed at 25, 40 °C, and the samples were taken after 0, 3, 12 and 36 h. The content of artemisinin in each sample was determined by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. Total RNA was extracted from the samples, and then transcriptome sequencing and real-time fluorescence quantitative PCR were used to quantitatively analyze the expression of the key enzyme genes in artemisinin synthesis pathway and competition pathway. The results showed that artemisinin content was increased by 20%, 42% and 68% after 3, 12, 36 h of treatment at 40 °C. The expression levels of FDS, ALDH1, CYP71AV1 and ADS were up-regulated by 4.3, 3.3, 2.5, 1.9 times, and the expression levels of SQS and BPS were down-regulated by 37% and 90% respectively. In summary, high temperature can promote the biosynthesis of artemisinin by promoting the expression of synthetase genes in artemisinin synthesis pathway and inhibiting the expression of synthetase genes in artemisinin-competition pathway.
Antimalarials ; metabolism ; Artemisia annua ; metabolism ; Artemisinins ; metabolism ; Biosynthetic Pathways ; Plants, Medicinal ; metabolism ; Temperature

Ginseng has been believed to be a powerful tonic by oriental people for a long time and is one of the most popular folk medicine in oriental countries. Intraperitoneal injection of ginseng into rats and mice has been reported to Increase the rates of hepatic RNA and protein synthesis, increase proliforation of rough RES of liver, and enhance alcohol metabolism. We have carried out a study to see the effects of red ginseng powder and extract on in vivo and in vitro metabolism of enflurane and methoxyflurane in male Fisher 344 rats. Red ginseng powder was dissolved in deionized water and dosed for two weeks ad libitum in rats. Hepatic microsomes were prepared and oxidative defluorination of enflurane and methoxyflurane were measured in vitro. Using red ginseng extract, studies were done of both acute and chronic treatment in rats. In chronic experiments, they were dosed with several dosages three times a day for three days; on the fourth day enflurane was administered i.p. and one hour later fluoride levels were mesured in plasma and hepatic microsomes were prepared for in vitro studies as above. In the acute experiment enflurane was administered intraperitoneally eighteen hours after single oral dosage of ginseng and plasma defluorination was measured. There were no statistically significant differences in hepatic microsomal cytochrome P-450 content or defluorination of enflurane and methoxyflurane between control and experimental groups using either red ginseng extract or powder. The results showed that ginseng ingestion did not affect the metabolism of enflurane and methoxyflurane.
Animal ; Enflurane/metabolism* ; Male ; Methoxyflurane/metabolism* ; Panax/metabolism* ; Plants, Medicinal* ; Rats ; Rats, Inbred F344

The progress of Chinese medicine modernization is slow in china, and one of the reason is the dated process method. The fermentation technology of pharmaceutical fungi is more and more perfect. To process Chinese medicine by pharmaceutical fungi could enhance the effective density of active ingredient in Chinese medicine, and the fungi could produce a variety of active secondary metabolite, moreover, some compounds in Chinese medicine could be bio-transformed to produce new compound by pharmaceutical fungi in the fermentation. So process Chinese medicine by pharmaceutical fungi could produce de novo Chinese medicine preparations which include a variety of bioactive compounds, and it is suitable to produce in a large scale and convenient to control the quality. To process Chinese medicine by submerged fermentation of pharmaceutical fungi provides a new process method for Chinese medicine.
Biotransformation ; Drugs, Chinese Herbal ; metabolism ; Fermentation ; Fungi ; metabolism ; Plants, Medicinal ; metabolism ; Quality Control ; Technology, Pharmaceutical ; methods

To investigate the role of distribution and phylogeny of phenylethanoid glycoside in medicinal plants of Gesneriaceae, five phenylpropanoid glycosides, acteoside, paraboside B, isonuomioside A, paraboside II, and paraboside III were quantitatively determined in 12 species of Gesneriaceae by HPLC. The existence and content of these compounds were analyzed. The results showed that phenylethanoid glycosides were found in the most of those plants, but the kind of phenylethanoid glycosides varied in different species. Acteoside distribute in most of this plant group, paraboside B, isonuomioside A, paraboside II, and paraboside III were rare in those plants. The results of this study support morphological viewpoint that Trib. Trichosporeae is more developmental than Trib. Didymocarpeae.
Glucosides ; chemistry ; metabolism ; Magnoliopsida ; metabolism ; Phenylethyl Alcohol ; chemistry ; Plants, Medicinal ; metabolism