Project description:This study evaluated the variability of methylxanthine content of Ilex guayusa under different geographical, light, and age conditions, as an opportunity to emphasize the value of the chakra agroforestry system in the search for sustainable use of natural products with potential industrial applications.
Project description:Plants perceive herbivory induced volatiles and respond to them by upregulating their defenses. So far, the organs responsible for volatile perception remain poorly described. Here, we show that responsiveness to the herbivory induced green leaf volatile (Z)-3-hexenyl acetate (HAC) in terms of volatile emission, transcriptional regulation and jasmonate defense hormone activation is largely constrained to younger maize leaves. Older leaves are much less sensitive to HAC. In a given leaf, responsiveness to HAC is high at immature developmental stages and drops off rapidly during maturation. Responsiveness to the non-volatile elicitor ZmPep3 shows an opposite pattern, demonstrating that this form of hyposmia (i.e. decreased sense of smell) is not due to a general defect in jasmonate defense signaling in mature leaves. Neither stomatal conductance nor leaf cuticle composition explain the unresponsiveness of older leaves to HAC, suggesting perception mechanisms upstream of jasmonate signaling as driving factors. Finally, we show that hyposmia in older leaves is not restricted to HAC, and extends to the full blend of herbivory induced volatiles. In conclusion, our work identifies immature maize leaves as dominant stress volatile sensing organs. The tight spatiotemporal control of volatile perception may facilitate within-plant defense signaling to protect young leaves, and may allow plants with complex architectures to explore the dynamic odor landscapes at the outer periphery of their shoots
Project description:Graviola (Annona muricata) is a tropical plant with many traditional ethnobotanic uses and pharmacologic applications. A metabolomic study of both aqueous and DMSO extracts from Annona muricata leaves recently allowed us to identify dozens of bioactive compounds. In the present study, we use a proteomic study to reveal new bioactivities of these leave extracts on both conditioned media and extracts of HT-1080 fibrosarcoma treated cells. Our results reveal the complete sets of deregulated proteins after treatment with aqueous and DMSO extracts from An-nona muricata leaves. Functional enrichment analysis of proteomic data suggests deregulation of cell cycle and iron metabolism, which are experimentally validated. Additional experimental data reveal that these extracts protect from ferroptosis to both HT-1080 fibrosarcoma cells and HMEC-1 endothelial cells.
Project description:To investigate the roles of microRNAs in the aqueous humor of patients with typical age-related macular degeneration and polypoidal choroidal vasculopathy using next-generation sequencing.
Project description:Specific recognition and bacterial adhesion to host cells by uropathogenic E. coli (UPEC) are the first steps towards infection of epithelial tissue of the human urogenital system. Therefore, targeting of UPEC virulence factors, relevant for adhesion, is a promising approach for prevention of recurrent urinary tract infections (UTI). A fully characterized plant-derived aqueous extract from the leaves of Orthosiphon stamineus (OWE), a plant traditionally used in clinical practice in Europe and Asia for UTI, has been shown to exert strong antiadhesive effects under in vitro and in vivo conditions. For improved understanding of the underlying mechanisms transcriptome analysis of OWE-treated UPEC strain UTI89 by Illumina sequencing and cross-validation of these data by qPCR indicated significant down-regulation of bacterial adhesins (curli, type 1-, F1C- and P fimbriae) and of the chaperone-mediated protein folding/unfolding and pilus assembly process; in contrast flagellar and motility-related genes were upregulated. We conclude that OWE transforms the sessile lifestyle of bacteria into a motile one and therefore disables bacterial attachment to the host cell. Additionally, the extract inhibited gene expression of multiple iron acquisition systems (Ent, Fep, Feo, Fhu, Chu, Sit, Ybt) concomitant with an upregulated expression of the ferric uptake regulator (Fur) repressor. The present study explains the antiadhesive and antiinfective effect of the plant extract by pinpointing specific biochemical and molecular targets.
Project description:This study evaluated the variability of methylxanthine content of Ilex guayusa under different geographical, light, and age conditions, as an opportunity to emphasize the value of the chakra agroforestry system in the search for sustainable use of natural products with potential industrial applications.