Challenges in Medicinal and Aromatic Plants DNA Barcoding—Lessons from the Lamiaceae

The potential value of DNA barcoding for the identification of medicinal plants and authentication of traded plant materials has been widely recognized; however, a number of challenges remain before DNA methods are fully accepted as an essential quality control method by industry and regulatory authorities. The successes and limitations of conventional DNA barcoding are considered in relation to important members of the Lamiaceae. The mint family (Lamiaceae) contains over one thousand species recorded as having a medicinal use, with many more exploited in food and cosmetics for their aromatic properties. The family is characterized by a diversity of secondary products, most notably the essential oils (EOs) produced in external glandular structures on the aerial parts of the plant that typify well-known plants of the basil (Ocimum), lavender (Lavandula), mint (Mentha), thyme (Thymus), sage (Salvia) and related genera. This complex, species-rich family includes widely cultivated commercial hybrids and endangered wild-harvested traditional medicines, and examples of potential toxic adulterants within the family are explored in detail. The opportunities provided by next generation sequencing technologies to whole plastome barcoding and nuclear genome sequencing are also discussed with relevant examples.

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An overview on therapeutic potential of Iris Persica

Current Traditional Medicine ◽

10.2174/2215083806666200117111320 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 06 ◽

Author(s):

Faiq H. S. Hussain ◽

Hawraz Ibrahim M. Amin ◽

Dinesh kumar Patel ◽

Omji Porwal

Keyword(s):

Therapeutic Potential ◽

Biological Activities ◽

Folk Medicine ◽

Underground Storage ◽

Kurdistan Region ◽

Traditional Medicines ◽

The Family ◽

Storage Organs ◽

Radical Generation ◽

Perennial Herbs

: The family Iridaceae contains 92 genera and more than 1800 species, mostly perennial herbs with underground storage organs called rhizomes (bulbs). Some genera are important in traditional medicines, especially Iris and Gladiolus. The genus Iris belongs to this family and comprises about hundreds species among them, 12 species are found in Iraq. It has been widely used various medicines worldwide especially Iris persica is used in folk medicine in the Kurdistan region of Iraq as an effective treatment against tumours, antibacterial, antifungal and treating inflammation. Earlier finding confirmed that Iris persica and its constituents play role in the scavenging of free radical generation and prevention of disease pathogenesis. Each part of the Iris persica herb has some medicinal property. This review gives a eagle eye view mainly on the biological activities of the Iris persica and some of their compounds isolated, pharmacological actions of the Iris persica extracts and products, and plausible medicinal and therapeutically applications.

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Traditional, phytochemical, and biological aspects of Rosa alba L.: a systematic review

Future Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences ◽

10.1186/s43094-020-00132-z ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Anju Verma ◽

Rajni Srivastava ◽

Pankaj Kumar Sonar ◽

Ramprakash Yadav

Keyword(s):

Systematic Review ◽

Biological Activities ◽

Chemical Constituents ◽

Research Work ◽

Biological Properties ◽

Medicinal And Aromatic Plants ◽

Research Papers ◽

Northwest Africa ◽

The Family ◽

White Rose

Abstract Background Rosa alba L. belongs to the family Rosaceae. This species is widely cultivated in Europe, Asia, North America, and Northwest Africa due to its fragrance, ornamental, and medicinal values. It is commonly known as white oil-bearing rose, white rose, white rose of York, backyard rose, and sufaid gulab. Main text Rosa alba L. has many biological properties like antioxidant, antimicrobial, antifungal, antifertility, teratogenic, memory enhancing, cytotoxic, and genotoxic activities. The essential oil of Rosa alba L. possesses good antimicrobial activity and consists of many chemical constituents like- citronellol, geraniol, nerol, linalool, citral, carvacrol, eugenol, etc. Conclusion This article briefly reviews the cultivation, traditional uses, phytochemistry, and biological activities of Rosa alba L. Many research papers have been published on the proposed plant and still, there is a very vast scope of research on it. Therefore, this review will be very fruitful for those scientists who are doing or plan to do research work on this plant. All the scientific findings written in this review are explored from Google web, Google Scholar, PubMed, ScienceDirect, Medicinal and Aromatic Plants Abstracts (MAPA), and SciFinder. To date, it is the first systematic review article of such kind, on this plant.

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A Review on the Anti-Viral Activity of Houttuynia cordata: A Possible Herb for the Management and Treatment of COVID-19

Current Research Journal of Pharmaceutical and Allied Sciences ◽

10.54059/2021.4(2)crjpas_190 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 4 (2) ◽

pp. 3-10

Author(s):

Emdormi Rymbai ◽

Keyword(s):

Vital Role ◽

Viral Agent ◽

Houttuynia Cordata ◽

Traditional Medicines ◽

Virulent Newcastle Disease Virus ◽

Wide Range ◽

Anti Cancer ◽

The Family ◽

Anti Oxidant

Plants are an important source of natural products and they play a vital role in the field of medicinal chemistry and pharmaceutical science. Traditional medicines have been practiced and used for thousands of years, mostly in Asian countries, where plants are the main sources of medicine. Houttuynia cordata, a herb that belongs to the family Saururaceae, has a wide range of pharmacological activities and is used traditionally in conditions like anisolobis sores, heatstroke, lung carbuncles, malaria, scrotal abscess, tonsillitis, salammoniac poison and has also been widely accepted to possess anti-cancer, anti-oxidant, anti-hypertension, anti-inflammatory, anti-mutagenic, antibacterial, anti-viral and anti-purulent activity. Moreover, it is one of the herbs that was recognized during pandemic outbreaks, such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (SARS CoV) in China, virulent Newcastle Disease Virus (VNDV) in Java (Indonesia) and Newcastle (England). In this review, we briefly discuss the role of H. cordata as an anti-viral agent and the possibility of developing a dosage form against Coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19).

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An Improved Path-Generating Regulator for Two-Wheeled Robots to Track the Circle/Arc Passage

Mathematical Problems in Engineering ◽

10.1155/2014/254503 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 2014 ◽

pp. 1-13 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Jun Dai ◽

Naohiko Hanajima ◽

Toshiharu Kazama ◽

Akihiko Takashima

Keyword(s):

Control Method ◽

Convergence Property ◽

Tangential Direction ◽

Navigation Problem ◽

Wheeled Robots ◽

Robot Trajectory ◽

Look Ahead ◽

Straight Line ◽

The Family ◽

Straight Lines

The improved path-generating regulator (PGR) is proposed to path track the circle/arc passage for two-wheeled robots. The PGR, which is a control method for robots so as to orient its heading toward the tangential direction of one of the curves belonging to the family of path functions, is applied to navigation problem originally. Driving environments for robots are usually roads, streets, paths, passages, and ridges. These tracks can be seen as they consist of straight lines and arcs. In the case of small interval, arc can be regarded as straight line approximately; therefore we extended the PGR to drive the robot move along circle/arc passage based on the theory that PGR to track the straight passage. In addition, the adjustable look-ahead method is proposed to improve the robot trajectory convergence property to the target circle/arc. The effectiveness is proved through MATLAB simulations on both the comparisons with the PGR and the improved PGR with adjustable look-ahead method. The results of numerical simulations show that the adjustable look-ahead method has better convergence property and stronger capacity of resisting disturbance.

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A highly contiguous nuclear genome assembly of the mandarinfish Synchiropus splendidus (Syngnathiformes: Callionymidae)

G3 Genes|Genome|Genetics ◽

10.1093/g3journal/jkab306 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Martin Stervander ◽

William A Cresko

Keyword(s):

Genome Assembly ◽

Nuclear Genome ◽

Phylogenetic Position ◽

Blue Color ◽

Long Reads ◽

The Family ◽

Commercially Important ◽

Genomic Resource ◽

Genome Assemblies ◽

Important Fish

Abstract The fish order Syngnathiformes has been referred to as a collection of misfit fishes, comprising commercially important fish such as red mullets as well as the highly diverse seahorses, pipefishes, and seadragons—the well-known family Syngnathidae, with their unique adaptations including male pregnancy. Another ornate member of this order is the species mandarinfish. No less than two types of chromatophores have been discovered in the spectacularly colored mandarinfish: the cyanophore (producing blue color) and the dichromatic cyano-erythrophore (producing blue and red). The phylogenetic position of mandarinfish in Syngnathiformes, and their promise of additional genetic discoveries beyond the chromatophores, made mandarinfish an appealing target for whole genome sequencing. We used linked sequences to create synthetic long reads, producing a highly contiguous genome assembly for the mandarinfish. The genome assembly comprises 483 Mbp (longest scaffold 29 Mbp), has an N50 of 12 Mbp, and an L50 of 14 scaffolds. The assembly completeness is also high, with 92.6% complete, 4.4% fragmented, and 2.9% missing out of 4,584 BUSCO genes found in ray-finned fishes. Outside the family Syngnathidae, the mandarinfish represents one of the most contiguous syngnathiform genome assemblies to date. The mandarinfish genomic resource will likely serve as a high-quality outgroup to syngnathid fish, and furthermore for research on the genomic underpinnings of the evolution of novel pigmentation.

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The first representatives of the millipede family Glomeridellidae (Diplopoda, Glomerida) recorded from China and Indochina

ZooKeys ◽

10.3897/zookeys.954.54694 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 954 ◽

pp. 1-15

Author(s):

Weixin Liu ◽

Sergei Golovatch

Keyword(s):

Phylogenetic Analysis ◽

New Species ◽

Dna Barcoding ◽

Southern China ◽

Mitochondrial Gene ◽

Guizhou Province ◽

The Family ◽

Structural Details ◽

Molecular Phylogenetic ◽

A New Species

A new species of glomeridellid millipede is described from Guizhou Province, southern China: Tonkinomeris huzhengkunisp. nov. This new epigean species differs very clearly in many structural details, being sufficiently distinct morphologically and disjunct geographically from T. napoensis Nguyen, Sierwald & Marek, 2019, the type and sole species of Tonkinomeris Nguyen, Sierwald & Marek, 2019, which was described recently from northern Vietnam. The genus Tonkinomeris is formally relegated from Glomeridae and assigned to the family Glomeridellidae, which has hitherto been considered strictly Euro-Mediterranean in distribution and is thus new to the diplopod faunas of China and Indochina. Tonkinomeris is re-diagnosed and shown to have perhaps the basalmost position in the family Glomeridellidae. Its relationships are discussed, both morphological and zoogeographical, within and outside the Glomeridellidae, which can now be considered as relict and basically Oriental in origin. Because of the still highly limited array of DNA-barcoding sequences of the COI mitochondrial gene available in the GenBank, the first molecular phylogenetic analysis of Glomerida attempted here shows our phylogram to be too deficient to consider meaningful.

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ddRAD Sequencing Sheds Light on Low Interspecific and High Intraspecific mtDNA Divergences in Two Groups of Caddisflies

Insect Systematics and Diversity ◽

10.1093/isd/ixab013 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 5 (5) ◽

Author(s):

Juha Salokannel ◽

Kyung Min Lee ◽

Aki Rinne ◽

Marko Mutanen

Keyword(s):

Dna Barcoding ◽

Large Scale ◽

Dna Barcode ◽

Nuclear Genome ◽

Distinct Species ◽

Present Species ◽

Cryptic Diversity ◽

Weak Support ◽

Genomic Scale ◽

Group Species

Abstract Large-scale global efforts on DNA barcoding have repeatedly revealed unexpected patterns of variability in mtDNA, including deep intraspecific divergences and haplotype sharing between species. Understanding the evolutionary causes behind these patterns calls for insights from the nuclear genome. While building a near-complete DNA barcode library of Finnish caddisflies, a case of barcode-sharing and some cases of deep intraspecific divergences were observed. In this study, the Apatania zonella (Zetterstedt, 1840) group and three Limnephilus Leach, 1815 species were studied using double digest RAD sequencing (ddRAD-seq), morphology, and DNA barcoding. The results support the present species boundaries in the A. zonella group species. A morphologically distinct but mitogenetically nondistinct taxon related to parthenogenetic Apatania hispida (Forsslund, 1930) got only weak support for its validity as a distinct species. The morphology and genomic-scale data do not indicate cryptic diversity in any of the three Limnephilus species despite the observed deep intraspecific divergences in DNA barcodes. This demonstrates that polymorphism in mtDNA may not reflect cryptic diversity, but mitonuclear discordance due to other evolutionary causes.

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De novo Assembly of the Brugia malayi Genome Using Long Reads from a Single MinION Flowcell

Scientific Reports ◽

10.1038/s41598-019-55908-y ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 9 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Joseph R. Fauver ◽

John Martin ◽

Gary J. Weil ◽

Makedonka Mitreva ◽

Peter U. Fischer

Keyword(s):

Single Molecule ◽

New Technologies ◽

Reference Genome ◽

De Novo ◽

Complete Mitochondrial Genome ◽

Nuclear Genome ◽

Brugia Malayi ◽

Field Isolates ◽

Sequencing Technologies ◽

Long Reads

AbstractFilarial nematode infections cause a substantial global disease burden. Genomic studies of filarial worms can improve our understanding of their biology and epidemiology. However, genomic information from field isolates is limited and available reference genomes are often discontinuous. Single molecule sequencing technologies can reduce the cost of genome sequencing and long reads produced from these devices can improve the contiguity and completeness of genome assemblies. In addition, these new technologies can make generation and analysis of large numbers of field isolates feasible. In this study, we assessed the performance of the Oxford Nanopore Technologies MinION for sequencing and assembling the genome of Brugia malayi, a human parasite widely used in filariasis research. Using data from a single MinION flowcell, a 90.3 Mb nuclear genome was assembled into 202 contigs with an N50 of 2.4 Mb. This assembly covered 96.9% of the well-defined B. malayi reference genome with 99.2% identity. The complete mitochondrial genome was obtained with individual reads and the nearly complete genome of the endosymbiotic bacteria Wolbachia was assembled alongside the nuclear genome. Long-read data from the MinION produced an assembly that approached the quality of a well-established reference genome using comparably fewer resources.

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“Invasive Aliens”: A Student Citizen-Science Activity Using DNA Barcoding to Investigate Concepts in Ecology & Molecular Biology

The American Biology Teacher ◽

10.1525/abt.2019.81.3.169 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 81 (3) ◽

pp. 169-174

Author(s):

Jeff Eble ◽

John Pecore

Keyword(s):

Dna Barcoding ◽

Citizen Science ◽

Classroom Engagement ◽

Lutjanus Campechanus ◽

Piscivorous Fish ◽

Sequencing Technologies ◽

Ecological Concepts ◽

Student Assessments ◽

Invasive Lionfish ◽

Citizen Science Project

Student participation in authentic research, as citizen scientists, can improve classroom engagement, achievement of learning objectives, and perceptions of science. We present DNA barcoding of invasive lionfish (Pterois volitans) prey as an example student citizen-science project, though the protocols, objectives, and outcomes can be generalized to any piscivorous fish. The objective of this five-lab conservation genetics unit is to enhance student understanding of fundamental molecular and ecological concepts through applied use of DNA sequencing technologies. Student assessments were equivocal, indicating modest gains in conceptual understanding and maintenance of an overall high perception of science. More notably, student findings have contributed to an improved understanding of the impacts of invasive lionfish, including providing the first evidence that lionfish prey on economically important red snapper (Lutjanus campechanus).

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