Pongamia pinnata (Leguminosae) is widely distributed along southeastern Asia to the west Pacific and north Australia. All parts of the plant have been used as crude drug for the treatment of tumors, piles, skin diseases, wounds, ulcers, etc. [1]. Extracts of the plant possess significant anti-diarrhoeal, anti-fungal, anti-plasmodial, anti-ulcerogenic, anti-inflammatory, analgesic activities [2 ...

OBJECTIVES There is an urgent need to discover new antimalarials, due to the spread of chloroquine resistance and the limited number of available drugs. Chalcones are one of the classes of natural products that are known to possess antiplasmodial properties. Therefore, the in vitro antiplasmodial activity of the main hop chalcone xanthohumol and seven derivatives was evaluated. In addition, the...

Flavanones are the common precursors of plant polyphenolic compounds collectively known as flavonoids. Leguminous plants have evolved a distinct class of flavanone molecules, known as 5-deoxyflavanones that play important roles in their symbiotic interactions. A four-step metabolic circuit was constructed in Escherichia coli with plant genes from heterologous origins: 4-coumarate:coenzyme A lig...

Crosslinking is an effective way to fabricate high-selective CO2 separation membranes because of its unique crosslinking framework. Thus, it is essentially significant to study the influence of crosslinking degree on the permeation selectivities of CO2. Herein, we report a successful and facile synthesis of a series of polyethylene oxide (PEO)-based diblock copolymers (BCP) incorporated with an...

Flavonoids are secondary metabolites derived from phenylalanine and acetate metabolism that perform a variety of essential functions in higher plants. Studies over the past 30 years have supported a model in which flavonoid metabolism is catalyzed by an enzyme complex localized to the endoplasmic reticulum [Hrazdina, G. & Wagner, G. J. (1985) Arch. Biochem. Biophys. 237, 88-100]. To test this m...

Comprehensive functional data on plant R2R3-MYB transcription factors is still scarce compared to the manifold of their occurrence. Here, we identified the Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) R2R3-MYB transcription factor MYB12 as a flavonol-specific activator of flavonoid biosynthesis. Transient expression in Arabidopsis protoplasts revealed a high degree of functional similarity between MYB12 ...

BACKGROUND Chalcone, an important intermediate of flavonoid synthetic pathway, has been shown to exhibit diverse biological and pharmacological activities such as anti- cancer, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, etc. RESULTS In this study, a novel series of chalcones fatty acid esters 5b-e and 6b-e have been synthesized via the reaction of the respective chalcones with either palmitic or stearic...

A new strategy which uses very cheap FeCl3 as an effective catalyst in the presence of Me3SiCl has been developed for the conjugate addition of enones and chalcone with unactivated weakly nucleophilic carbamates.