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Phytochemistry
Phytochemistry is the study of phytochemicals, which are chemicals derived from plants. Phytochemists strive to describe the structures of the large number of secondary metabolites found in plants, the functions of these compounds in human and plant biology, and the biosynthesis of these compounds. Plants synthesize phytochemicals for many reasons, including to protect themselves against insect attacks and plant diseases. The compounds found in plants are of many kinds, but most can be grouped into four major biosynthetic classes: alkaloids, phenylpropanoids, polyketides, and terpenoids. Phytochemistry can be considered a subfield of botany or chemistry. Activities can be led in botanical gardens or in the wild with the aid of ethnobotany. Phytochemical studies directed toward human (i.e. drug discovery) use may fall under the discipline of pharmacognosy, whereas phytochemical studies focused on the ecological functions and evolution of phytochemicals likely fall under the disci ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plant Physiology
Plant physiology is a subdiscipline of botany concerned with the functioning, or physiology, of plants. Plant physiologists study fundamental processes of plants, such as photosynthesis, respiration, plant nutrition, plant hormone functions, tropisms, nastic movements, photoperiodism, photomorphogenesis, circadian rhythms, environmental stress physiology, seed germination, dormancy and stomata function and transpiration. Plant physiology interacts with the fields of plant morphology (structure of plants), plant ecology (interactions with the environment), phytochemistry (biochemistry of plants), cell biology, genetics, biophysics and molecular biology. Aims The field of plant physiology includes the study of all the internal activities of plants—those chemical and physical processes associated with life as they occur in plants. This includes study at many levels of scale of size and time. At the smallest scale are molecular interactions of photosynthesis and internal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Botany
Botany, also called plant science, is the branch of natural science and biology studying plants, especially Plant anatomy, their anatomy, Plant taxonomy, taxonomy, and Plant ecology, ecology. A botanist or plant scientist is a scientist who specialises in this field. "Plant" and "botany" may be defined more narrowly to include only land plants and their study, which is also known as phytology. Phytologists or botanists (in the strict sense) study approximately 410,000 species of Embryophyte, land plants, including some 391,000 species of vascular plants (of which approximately 369,000 are flowering plants) and approximately 20,000 bryophytes. Botany originated as history of herbalism#Prehistory, prehistoric herbalism to identify and later cultivate plants that were edible, poisonous, and medicinal, making it one of the first endeavours of human investigation. Medieval physic gardens, often attached to Monastery, monasteries, contained plants possibly having medicinal benefit. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pharmacognosy
Pharmacognosy is the interdisciplinary scientific study of natural drugs and bioactive compounds from plants, animals, and minerals—originally focused on identifying crude drugs but now expanded to molecular, chemical, ecological, and medicinal aspects of natural products. Plants produce a variety of chemical compounds—primary metabolites essential for all plants and secondary metabolites with specialized roles like defense and pollination attraction—that include classes such as alkaloids, polyphenols, glycosides, and terpenes, many of which have therapeutic uses in humans and are isolated through bioassay-guided fractionation. Traditional medicine continue to inform modern pharmacology. Microscopic evaluation plays a key role in identifying herbs, detecting adulterants, and examining distinctive plant tissues through methods such as measuring leaf constants, including the stomatal index, which expresses the proportion of stomata to epidermal cells. Description The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Natural Products
A natural product is a natural compound or substance produced by a living organism—that is, found in nature. In the broadest sense, natural products include any substance produced by life. Natural products can also be prepared by chemical synthesis (both semisynthesis and total synthesis and have played a central role in the development of the field of organic chemistry by providing challenging synthetic targets). The term ''natural product'' has also been extended for commercial purposes to refer to cosmetics, dietary supplements, and foods produced from natural sources without added artificial ingredients. Within the field of organic chemistry, the definition of natural products is usually restricted to organic compounds isolated from natural sources that are produced by the pathways of primary or secondary metabolism. Within the field of medicinal chemistry, the definition is often further restricted to secondary metabolites. Secondary metabolites (or specialized metab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plant Defense Against Herbivory
Plant defense against herbivory or host-plant resistance is a range of adaptations Evolution, evolved by plants which improve their fitness (biology), survival and reproduction by reducing the impact of herbivores. Many plants produce secondary metabolites, known as Heterotelergones, allelochemicals, that influence the behavior, growth, or survival of herbivores. These chemical defenses can act as repellents or toxins to herbivores or reduce plant digestibility. Another defensive strategy of plants is changing their attractiveness. Plant perception (physiology), Plants can sense being touched, and they can respond with strategies to defend against herbivores. Plants alter their appearance by changing their size or quality in a way that prevents overconsumption by large herbivores, reducing the rate at which they are consumed. Other defensive strategies used by plants include escaping or avoiding herbivores at any time in any placefor example, by growing in a location where plants ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Botanical Garden
A botanical garden or botanic gardenThe terms ''botanic'' and ''botanical'' and ''garden'' or ''gardens'' are used more-or-less interchangeably, although the word ''botanic'' is generally reserved for the earlier, more traditional gardens. is a garden with a documented collection of living plants for the purpose of scientific research, conservation, display, and education. It is their mandate as a botanical garden that plants are labelled with their botanical names. It may contain specialist plant collections such as cactus, cacti and other succulent plants, herb gardens, plants from particular parts of the world, and so on; there may be greenhouse, glasshouses or shadehouses, again with special collections such as tropical plants, alpine plants, or other exotic plants that are not native to that region. Most are at least partly open to the public, and may offer guided tours, public programming such as workshops, courses, educational displays, art exhibitions, book rooms, op ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chemistry
Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a physical science within the natural sciences that studies the chemical elements that make up matter and chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions: their composition, structure, properties, behavior and the changes they undergo during chemical reaction, reactions with other chemical substance, substances. Chemistry also addresses the nature of chemical bonds in chemical compounds. In the scope of its subject, chemistry occupies an intermediate position between physics and biology. It is sometimes called the central science because it provides a foundation for understanding both Basic research, basic and Applied science, applied scientific disciplines at a fundamental level. For example, chemistry explains aspects of plant growth (botany), the formation of igneous rocks (geology), how atmospheric ozone is formed and how environmental pollutants are degraded (ecology), the prop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phytochemical
Phytochemicals are naturally-occurring chemicals present in or extracted from plants. Some phytochemicals are nutrients for the plant, while others are metabolites produced to enhance plant survivability and reproduction. The fields of extracting phytochemicals for manufactured products or applying scientific methods to study phytochemical properties are called ''phytochemistry''. An individual who uses phytochemicals in food chemistry manufacturing or research is a ''phytochemist''. Phytochemicals without a nutrient definition have no confirmed biological activities or proven health benefits when consumed in plant foods. Once phytochemicals in a food enter the digestion process, the fate of individual phytochemicals in the body is unknown due to extensive metabolism of the food in the gastrointestinal tract, producing phytochemical metabolites with different biological properties from those of the parent compound that may have been tested in vitro. Further, the bioavaila ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Urtica Dioica
''Urtica dioica'', often known as common nettle, burn nettle, stinging nettle (although not all plants of this species sting) or nettle leaf, or just a nettle or stinger, is a herbaceous perennial flowering plant in the family Urticaceae. Originally native to Europe, much of temperate Asia and western North Africa, it is now found worldwide. The species is divided into six subspecies, five of which have many hollow stinging hairs called trichomes on the leaves and stems, which act like hypodermic needles, injecting histamine and other chemicals that produce a stinging sensation upon contact ("contact urticaria", a form of contact dermatitis). The plant has a long history of use as a source for traditional medicine, food, tea, and textile raw material in ancient (such as Saxon) and modern societies. Description ''Urtica dioica'' is a dioecious, herbaceous, and perennial plant. It grows to tall in the summer and dying down to the ground in winter. It has widely spread ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dandelion
''Taraxacum'' () is a genus of flowering plants in the family Asteraceae, which consists of species commonly known as dandelions. The scientific and hobby study of the genus is known as taraxacology. The genus has a near-cosmopolitan distribution, absent only from tropical and polar areas. Two of the most common species worldwide, '' T. officinale'' (the common dandelion) and '' T. erythrospermum'' (the red-seeded dandelion), are European species introduced into North America, where they are non-native. Dandelions thrive in temperate regions and can be found in yards, gardens, sides of roads, among crops, and in many other habitats. Like other members of the family Asteraceae, they have very small flowers collected together into a composite flower head. Each single flower in a head is called a ''floret''. In part due to their abundance, along with being a generalist species, dandelions are one of the most vital early spring nectar sources for a wide host of polli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chickweed
''Stellaria media'', chickweed, is an annual flowering plant in the family Caryophyllaceae. It is native to Eurasia and naturalized throughout the world, where it is a weed of waste ground, farmland and gardens. It is sometimes grown as a salad crop or for poultry consumption. Description Chickweed is a hardy annual which flowers throughout the year in northern Europe, in mild weather. The stems are terete and glabrous with a lax and sprawling growth habit, up to long and in diameter, with a line (very occasionally 2 lines) of hairs running straight down its length, alternating sides at the nodes. The petioles are 5 to 8 mm long with hairy margins. The leaves are green, hairless, oval and opposite, long by wide with a hydathode at the tip. The flowers are small, less than 1 cm in diameter, with 5 white petals, 1–3 mm long, nestled inside the larger (3–5 mm long) sepals. These sepals have long, wavyvillous hairs on their outer (distal) sides and a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Curcumin
Curcumin is a bright yellow chemical produced by plants of the ''Curcuma longa'' species. It is the principal curcuminoid of turmeric (''Curcuma longa''), a member of the ginger family, Zingiberaceae. It is sold as a herbal supplement, cosmetics ingredient, food flavoring, and food coloring. Chemically, curcumin is a polyphenol, more particularly a diarylheptanoid, belonging to the group of curcuminoids, which are natural phenol, phenolic pigments responsible for the yellow color of turmeric. Laboratory and clinical research have not confirmed any medical use for curcumin. It is difficult to study because it is both unstable and poorly bioavailable. It is unlikely to produce useful leads for drug development as a lead compound. History Curcumin was named in 1815 when Henri Auguste Vogel and Pierre Joseph Pelletier reported the first isolation of a "yellow coloring-matter" from the rhizomes of turmeric. Later, it was found to be a mixture of resin and turmeric oil. In 1910, Mi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
