Project description:Five undescribed alkaloids were isolated from the seeds of Cephalotaxus oliveri along with 27 known ones. The new structures were elucidated based on spectroscopic data including 1D and 2D NMR, MS and calculated ECD spectra. Among them, (+)-acetylcephalofortine C was an enantiomeric Cephalotaxine alkaloids. The performed bioassay revealed that those alkaloids were not cytotoxic against cancer cells and had no neuroprotective properties in the HEI-OC-1 cells model.
Project description:In previous work, cephalotaxine, harringtonine, homoharringtonine were shown to be accumulated differentially after various stimuli. Especially, after MeJA treatment, the concentration of 3 cephalotaxus alkaloids all showed decreasing. We speculated that the genes expressed lower after MeJA treatment might encode some enzymes responsible for the biosynthesis of cephalotaxus alkaloids. Therefore, choosing the sample treated with MeJA and the control sample for comparative iTRAQ analysis will greatly facilitate dissection of the genes involved in the biosynthesis of cephalotaxus alkaloids and even the acyl portions of cephalotaxus ester alkaloids. This approach is widely used for mining and identifying novel genes in the biosynthesis of secondary metabolites without genome data in plants.
