Metabolomics and molecular docking-directed anti-obesity study of the ethanol extract from Gynostemma pentaphyllum (Thunb.) Makino.

Ethnopharmacological Relevance: Gynostemma pentaphyllum (Thunb.) Makino (G. pentaphyllum) is an oriental herb documented to treat many diseases, including obesity, hyperlipidemia, metabolic syndromes and aging.

Monosaccharide composition analysis by 2D quantitative gsHSQC.

The physicochemical properties and biological activities of polysaccharides depend on their structures. Monosaccharide composition analysis is indispensable for the structural characterization of polysaccharides and is helpful in the quality control of polysaccharide preparation. Here, using a model mixture and tamarind seed polysaccharide as examples, we demonstrated that a quantitative 2D NMR method, gsHSQC (three gradient-selective Heteronuclear Single Quantum Coherence spectra acquired with incremented repetition times, i = 1, 2, 3) can directly quantify a variety of monosaccharides in solution with adequate precision and accuracy, requiring no derivatization, postprocessing steps and column separation.

Identification and Characterization of a Trillin Rhamnosyltransferase From .

Dioscorea zingiberensis accumulates abundant steroidal saponins, such as dioscin, which is the principal bioactive ingredient displaying a wide range of pharmacological activities. Diosgenin is the aglycone of dioscin, and recently, genes encoding cytochrome P450 enzymes in the late steps of diosgenin biosynthesis have been isolated. Diosgenin was successfully synthesized in the cholesterol-producing yeasts.

Improving lupeol production in yeast by recruiting pathway genes from different organisms.

Lupeol is a pentacyclic triterpene that shows a variety of pharmacological properties. Compared to engineering the production of sesquiterpenes and diterpenes, it is much more challenging to engineer the biosynthesis of triterpenes in microbial platforms. This study showed our efforts on engineering the triterpene pathway in Escherichia coli and Saccharomyces cerevisiae cells by recruiting the codon-optimized three lupeol pathway genes from different organisms.

Comparative Transcriptome Analysis Identifies Putative Genes Involved in Steroid Biosynthesis in Euphorbia tirucalli.

Phytochemical analysis of different tissues revealed a contrasting tissue-specificity for the biosynthesis of euphol and β-sitosterol, which represent the two pharmaceutically active steroids in . To uncover the molecular mechanism underlying this tissue-specificity for phytochemicals, a comprehensive transcriptome derived from its root, stem, leaf and latex was constructed, and a total of 91,619 unigenes were generated with 51.08% being successfully annotated against the non-redundant (Nr) protein database.