TY  - JOUR
A1  - Gechev, Tsanko S.
A1  - Hille, Jacques
A1  - Woerdenbag, Herman J.
A1  - Benina, Maria
A1  - Mehterov, Nikolay
A1  - Toneva, Valentina
A1  - Fernie, Alisdair R.
A1  - Müller-Röber, Bernd
T1  - Natural products from resurrection plants: Potential for medical applications
JF  - Biotechnology advances : an international review journal ; research reviews and patent abstracts
N2  - Resurrection species are a group of land plants that can tolerate extreme desiccation of their vegetative tissues during harsh drought stress, and still quickly often within hours regain normal physiological and metabolic functions following rehydration. At the molecular level, this desiccation tolerance is attributed to basal cellular mechanisms including the constitutive expression of stress-associated genes and high levels of protective metabolites present already in the absence of stress, as well as to transcriptome and metabolome reconfigurations rapidly occurring during the initial phases of drought stress. Parts of this response are conferred by unique metabolites, including a diverse array of sugars, phenolic compounds, and polyols, some of which accumulate to high concentrations within the plant cell. In addition to drought stress, these metabolites are proposed to contribute to the protection against other abiotic stresses and to an increased oxidative stress tolerance. Recently, extracts of resurrection species and particular secondary metabolites therein were reported to display biological activities of importance to medicine, with e.g. antibacterial, anticancer, antifungal, and antiviral activities, rendering them possible candidates for the development of novel drug substances as well as for cosmetics. Herein, we provide an overview of the metabolite composition of resurrection species, summarize the latest reports related to the use of natural products from resurrection plants, and outline their potential for medical applications. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).
KW  - Antibacterial
KW  - Anticancer
KW  - Antifungal
KW  - Antiviral
KW  - Natural product
KW  - Resurrection plant
KW  - Secondary metabolite
KW  - Synthetic biology
Y1  - 2014
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biotechadv.2014.03.005
SN  - 0734-9750
SN  - 1873-1899
VL  - 32
IS  - 6
SP  - 1091
EP  - 1101
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Oxford
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ivanov, Ivan
A1  - Benina, Maria
A1  - Petrov, Veselin
A1  - Gechev, Tsanko S.
A1  - Toneva, Valentina
T1  - Metabolic responses of gloxinia perennis to dehydration and rehydration
JF  - COMPTES RENDUS DE L ACADEMIE BULGARE DES SCIENCES
N2  - Gloxinia perennis is a species from the family Gesneriaceae with little known physiology, particularly in respect to responses to dehydration. G. perennis survived water deprivation for a month and then quickly recovered upon rehydration. The slow loss of water was in contrast with the quick dehydration of other Gesnerian species - Boea hygrometrica, Ramonda serbica, and Haber lea rhodopensis. Furthermore, a significant difference between older and younger leaves of G. perennis was observed. While the relative water content in the early stages of water deprivation was reduced to 65% in the old leaves, it was not or slightly reduced in the young ones, implying a mechanism that protects specifically the younger leaves from dehydration. Water deprivation induced accumulation of gama-aminobutyric acid and sugars like sucrose and raffinose, but decreased the levels of amino acids such as glycine, leucine, and isoleucine. The levels of these amino acids recovered after rehydration and in some cases like glycine and isoleucine were even higher in rehydrated leaves compared with unstressed controls. We conclude that G.perennis can survive prolonged drought stress but its responses to dehydration are different from the resurrection species from Gesneriaceae. All this makes G. perennis a good model that can be used for comparative genomics and metabolomics of Gesneriads exposed to desiccation.
KW  - Gloxinia perennis
KW  - drought stress
KW  - metabolome analysis
Y1  - 2014
SN  - 1310-1331
VL  - 67
IS  - 12
SP  - 1657
EP  - 1662
PB  - Publ. House of the Bulgarian Acad. of Sciences
CY  - Sofia
ER  -