Desert plants are exposed to a combination of environmental stress conditions, including water deficit, high temperature and high irradiance. We focused on antioxidative protection systems of C4 desert plant Haloxylon ammodendron and C3 desert plant Hedysarum scoparium within arid dune ecosystem with artificial controlling water availability. The activities of antioxidative enzymes (SOD, POD an...

The Haloxylon genus belongs to the Amaranthaceae (formerly Chenopodiaceae) family. The small trees or shrubs in this genus are referred to as the King of psammophytic plants, and perform important functions in environmental protection, including wind control and sand fixation in deserts. To better understand these beneficial plants, we sequenced the chloroplast (cp) genomes of Haloxylon ammoden...

BACKGROUND We evaluated the in vivo activity of Bunium persicum (Boiss) essential oil on infected mice with acute toxoplasmosis. METHODS To evaluate prophylactic effects, male NMRI mice received B. persicum essential oil at the concentrations of 0.05 and 0.1 mL/kg for 14 days. After 24 h mice were infected intraperitonealy with 1×10(4) tachyzoites of T. gondii, RH strain. In order to investig...

Crude extracts or phytochemicals obtained from some plants have potential anti-cancer properties. Teucrium persicum is an Iranian endemic plant belonging to the Lamiaceae family which has traditionally been used to relieve abdominal pains. However, the anti-cancer properties of this species of the Teucrium genus have not been investigated previously. In this study, we have used a highly invasiv...

The present study evaluated the potential benefit of supplementation with Heracleumpersicum as an adjunctive therapy to atorvastatin in dyslipidemic subjects. In a randomized, open-label, clinical trial, 100 dyslipidemic subjects were randomly assigned to: (1) H. persicum group (n=50, completers=18), receiving H. persicum extract (500 mg/day) + atorvastatin (10 mg/day) for 8 weeks, or (2) atorv...

Chemodiversity in plants provides sources of great value which might be helpful for finding new leads in drug discovery programs. Fabaceae as the third largest family of flowering plants was chosen to investigate its possible antifungal activity. In order to increase the effectiveness of the result, molecular similarity methods and chemical data were used. Twelve plants were selected from Fabac...

Bunium persicum (Boiss.) is an economically important medicinal plant growing wildly in arid regions in Iran. The fruit of B. persicum is widely used in traditional Iranian medicine to control colic pain and dysmenorrhoea. The aim of the current study was to determine antinociceptive mechanisms of B. persicum essential oil using an acetic acid-induced writhing test as a model of visceral pain a...

The impact of invasion on diversity varies widely and remains elusive. Despite the considerable attempts to understand mechanisms of biological invasion, it is largely unknown whether some communities' characteristics promote biological invasion, or whether some inherent characteristics of invaders enable them to invade other communities. Our aims were to assess the impact of one of the massive...

A method named "bag culture" was developed for coculturing of Linum persicum (section Syllinum) and L. austriacum (section Linum) hairy roots. For this propose L. austriacum and L. persicum hairy root cultures were established using Agrobacterium rhizogenes in McCown medium. L. persicum hairy roots in bags (1 mm2 mesh) were successfully grown together with L. austriacum hairy roots. The amounts...