Isoprene and monoterpene emission rates are essential inputs for atmospheric chemistry models that simulate atmospheric oxidant and particle distributions. Process studies of the biochemical and physiological mechanisms controlling these emissions are advancing our understanding and the accuracy of model predictions but efforts to quantify regional emissions have been limited by a lack of const...

Flowers of Clarkia breweri, an annual plant from the coastal range of California, emit a strong sweet scent of which S-linalool, an acyclic monoterpene, is a major component. Chromosomal, chemical, and morphological data, and the species' geographic distribution, suggest that C. breweri evolved from an extant nonscented species, C. concinna. A cDNA of Lis, the gene encoding S-linalool synthase,...

Among the terpenes, isoprene (C5) and monoterpene hydrocarbons (C10) have been shown to ameliorate abiotic stress in a number of plant species via two proposed mechanisms: membrane stabilization and direct antioxidant effects. Sesquiterpene hydrocarbons (C15) not only share the structural properties thought to lend protective qualities to isoprene and monoterpene hydrocarbons, but also react ra...

OBJECTIVES Monoterpenes can positively or negatively affect human health depending on their concentrations. To assess the atmospheric risk for greenhouse workers, monoterpene concentrations and personal exposure in herb-growing greenhouses were measured. METHODS Monoterpene concentrations in a commercial greenhouse, where rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis L.) and lavender (Lavandula angustifol...

Heat stress resistance of foliar photosynthetic apparatus was investigated in the Mediterranean monoterpene-emitting evergreen sclerophyll species Quercus ilex. Leaf feeding with fosmidomycin, which is a specific inhibitor of the chloroplastic isoprenoid synthesis pathway, essentially stopped monoterpene emission and resulted in the decrease of the optimum temperature of photosynthetic electron...

The microbial degradation pathways of bicyclic monoterpenes contain unknown enzymes for carbon-carbon cleavages. Such enzymes may also be present in the betaproteobacterium Castellaniella defragrans, a model organism to study the anaerobic monoterpene degradation. In this study, a deletion mutant strain missing the first enzyme of the monocyclic monoterpene pathway transformed cometabolically t...

Dracocephalum kotschyi (Lamiaceae), as one of the remarkable aromatic plants, widely grows and also is cultivated in various temperate regions of Iran. There are diverse reports about the composition of the oil of this plant representing limonene derivatives as its major compounds. There is no report on cloning of monoor sesquiterpene synthases from this plant. In the present study, the aroma p...