The activity of flavones and oleanolic acid from Lippia lacunosa against susceptible and resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains

Tuberculosis (TB), caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, is the world’s number one killer among infectious diseases. The search for new natural products that can act as drugs against TB has received increased attention during the last years. In this work we describe the isolation and identification of the active antimycobacterial principles of the dichloromethane extract from Lippia lacunosa Mart. & Schauer, Verbenaceae. Compounds were evaluated for their in vitro activity against Mycobacterium tuberculosis (susceptible and rifampicin resistant strain) using a redox bioassay. From the dichloromethane extract of L. lacunosa leaves, seven methoxy-flavones named cirsimaritin (1), eupatilin (2), eupatorin (3), salvigenin (4), 3′-O-methyl-eupatorin (5), 3′,7-dimethoxy-5,6,4′- trihydroxyflavone (6), and 7′-O-methylapigenin (7), and one triterpene, named oleanolic acid (8), were isolated. All compounds were found to display antimycobacterial activity against susceptible strain, with MIC ranging from 25 to 200 μg/mL. None of them was active against rifampicin resistant strain. This is the first report in the antimycobacterial activity of 6-substituted flavones, as well as the first report of the occurrence of these substances in L. lacunosa

Morphoagronomic characteristics display high genetic diversity in Murupi chili pepper landraces

Murupi chili pepper is a hot Amazonian pepper that has been used as flavoring in the region, yet its diversity is unknown. This paper aims to assess the diversity in 20 landraces from Peruvian, Colombian, and Brazilian Amazon. The experiment was installed in Manaus-AM, using a randomized complete block design with three replicates and five plants per plot. Analyses of variance showed significant differences for all nine descriptors. Fruit yield showed, in average, to be 208.08 fruits per plant, tantamount to 381.44 g per plant. Given 50% of relative distances estimated by generalized Mahalanobis distances and, nearest neighbor clustering, they displayed six groups. Cluster I comprised 50% of the landraces. Clusters IV, V and VI were represented by ‘8’ (Putumayo, Colombia), ‘27’ (Yurimaguas, Peru) and ‘24’ (Jutaí-AM, Brazil), respectively. The highest yielding landrace showed to be ‘17’ (Manicoré-AM, Brazil), bearing 685.5 fruits and 1.92 kg per plant. Our findings suggest Murupi pepper may possibly be improved by selection and/ or hybridization. © 2018, Sociedade de Olericultura do Brasil. All rights reserved

Characterization of <em>Capsicum annuum</em> Genetic Diversity and Population Structure Based on Parallel Polymorphism Discovery with a 30K Unigene Pepper GeneChip

<div><p>The widely cultivated pepper, <em>Capsicum spp</em>., important as a vegetable and spice crop world-wide, is one of the most diverse crops. To enhance breeding programs, a detailed characterization of <em>Capsicum</em> diversity including morphological, geographical and molecular data is required. Currently, molecular data characterizing <em>Capsicum</em> genetic diversity is limited. The development and application of high-throughput genome-wide markers in <em>Capsicum</em> will facilitate more detailed molecular characterization of germplasm collections, genetic relationships, and the generation of ultra-high density maps. We have developed the Pepper GeneChip® array from Affymetrix for polymorphism detection and expression analysis in <em>Capsicum</em>. Probes on the array were designed from 30,815 unigenes assembled from expressed sequence tags (ESTs). Our array design provides a maximum redundancy of 13 probes per base pair position allowing integration of multiple hybridization values per position to detect single position polymorphism (SPP). Hybridization of genomic DNA from 40 diverse <em>C. annuum</em> lines, used in breeding and research programs, and a representative from three additional cultivated species (<em>C. frutescens, C. chinense</em> and <em>C. pubescens</em>) detected 33,401 SPP markers within 13,323 unigenes. Among the <em>C. annuum</em> lines, 6,426 SPPs covering 3,818 unigenes were identified. An estimated three-fold reduction in diversity was detected in non-pungent compared with pungent lines, however, we were able to detect 251 highly informative markers across these <em>C. annuum</em> lines. In addition, an 8.7 cM region without polymorphism was detected around <em>Pun1</em> in non-pungent <em>C. annuum</em>. An analysis of genetic relatedness and diversity using the software Structure revealed clustering of the germplasm which was confirmed with statistical support by principle components analysis (PCA) and phylogenetic analysis. This research demonstrates the effectiveness of parallel high-throughput discovery and application of genome-wide transcript-based markers to assess genetic and genomic features among <em>Capsicum annuum</em>.</p> </div