The Brazilian cerrado has undergone an intense process of fragmentation, which leads to an increase in the number of remnants exposed to edge effects and associated changes on environmental conditions that may affect the phenology of plants. This study aimed to verify whether the reproductive phenology of Xylopia aromatica (Lam.) Mart. (Annonaceae) differs under different light conditions in a ...

BACKGROUND Three major forms of human disease, cutaneous leishmaniasis, visceral leishmaniasis and mucocutaneous leishmaniasis, are caused by several leishmanial species whose geographic distribution frequently overlaps. These Leishmania species have diverse reservoir hosts, sand fly vectors and transmission patterns. In the Old World, the main parasite species responsible for leishmaniasis are...

A single pair of PCR primers within a conserved region of the mini-exon repeat was used to amplify the repeats from 10 species of pathogenic Leishmania belonging to four major clinical groups and also from three species of Trypanosoma. Oligonucleotide hybridization probes for the detection and identification of the PCR-amplified repeats were constructed from alignments of mini-exon intron and i...

BACKGROUND Three antibacterial diterpenes: (5R,8R,9S,10R)-12-oxo-ent-3,13(16)-clerodien-15-oic acid (1), 16-hydroxy-clerod-3,13(14)-diene-15,16-olide (2) and ent-12-oxolabda-8,13(16)-dien-15-oic acid (3) were previously isolated form Premna schimperi and P. oligotricha. Since andrographolide and other structurally related diterpenes were shown to have antileishmanial activity, the aim of the pr...

Zantedeschia aethiopica is an evergreen perennial plant cultivated worldwide and commonly used for ornamental and medicinal purposes including the treatment of bacterial infections. However, the current understanding of molecular and physiological mechanisms in this plant is limited, in comparison to other non-model plants. In order to improve understanding of the biology of this botanical spec...

The 23 species of mycoheterotrophic or exoparasitic land plants (from 15 genera and 6 families) studied so far all retain a minimal set of 17 of the normally 116 plastome genes. Only Rafflesia lagascae, an endoparasite concealed in its host except when flowering, has been reported as perhaps lacking a plastome, although it still possesses plastid-like compartments. We analyzed two other endopar...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the leishmanicidal activity of saponin, dasyscyphin C of Eclipta prostrata and sapogenin, gymnemagenol from Gymnema sylvestre leaves under in vitro conditions. MATERIALS AND METHODS Dasyscyphin C/Gymnemagenol were dissolved in phosphate buffered saline (PBS) and diluted with liquid medium to obtain concentrations ranging from 1000 to 15 mug /ml. The leishmanicidal activi...