Phytochemical constituents of the pericarps of Illicium difengpi and their anti-inflammatory activity.

Phytochemical investigation on the pericarps of Illicium difengpi lead to the isolation and structure elucidation of a new sesquiterpene, sesquicaranoic acid C (1), a new neolignan, difengpiol C (2), and 10 known compounds. The structures and absolute configurations of two new compounds were determined by a combination of NMR and CD spectroscopic analyses. All isolates were evaluated for their inhibitory effects on lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced nitric oxide (NO) production in RAW264.7 cells.

[DNA barcoding application of mitochondrial COI gene sequence in medicinal fish of Culter (Pisces: Cyprinidae)].

The sequence variation of medicinal fish of Culter (Pisces: Cyprinidae) was analyzed by using cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) sequencing collected from different regions of the Yangtze River basin, and we examine whether barcoding of COI can be used to discriminate medicinal fish of Culter. The AT content in the COI region of medicinal fish of Culter was higher than that of GC, which was similar with other species of Cypriniformes. Ninty-six percent of nucleotide changes were observed at the 3rd codon position of COI sequence, but the amino acid compositions translated by COI sequences of all Culter fish stayed the same. It is suggested that most synonymous mutations might occur at the 3rd position. The average Kimura-2-parameter (K2P) distance within-species was lower than 1%, and the K2P distance of pairwise-species was 10 times as much as that of within-species. The phylogenetic tree estimated by Neighbour-joining method indicated that species within genera invariably clustered, and generally so did individuals within species. Individuals from operational taxonomic units designated as different Culter species, supporting morphological evidence for each of these being separate species. It is suggested that the COI barcoding can be used to identify medicinal fish species of Culter.