Insight into morphological and molecular variations across Iranian spinach landraces.

Spinach is salt-tolerant leafy vegetable stemmed from central Asia. It has been well adapted to different climates of Iran. We aimed to study genetic diversity between several landraces as a prerequisite for crop improvement programs using molecular markers including microsatellites (SSRs) and morphological traits. Genetic diversity was studied among 22 spinach landraces using morphological and molecular tools. We developed 17 genic and genomic SSR markers based on the information acquired from NCBI resources. Morphological evaluation indicated high variability for economic traits including leaf color, leaf thickness, leaf wrinkle and seed type, across Iranian landraces. The molecular results exhibited that 12 out of 17 primer pairs successfully amplified genomic DNA with explicit bands. The results verified that genic markers were superior to genomic markers to detect polymorphism and genetic diversity. In this regard, PIC for genomic and genic SSRs was in the range of 0.4616-0.6621 and 0.5188-0.7394, respectively. Polymorphic genic SSRs were identified to be directly and indirectly involved in biotic/abiotic stresses. High degree of polymorphism, which was detected across the landraces by genic SSRs, could assist us to select 11 landraces for the second experiment. The second experiment was designed to evaluate the response of selected landraces to salinity stress. The results confirmed genetic variability among the landraces in terms of salinity tolerance. A highly diverse germplasm of Iranian spinach based on molecular and morphological characteristics along with the tolerance to oxidative stress provides an ample opportunity for plant breeders to select superior genotypes.

The evaluation of the effect of metformin on breast fibrocystic disease.

BACKGROUND: Fibrocystic changes (FCC) is the most common benign breast disease. The main pathophysiologic mechanism of FCC, excessive cell proliferation in response to monthly estrogen and progesterone changes. Regarding to antiproliferative of metformin, the aim of this study is the evaluation of the effect of metformin on FCC in women who were referred to gynecology clinics of ArakMETHODS:This study is a double blind placebo control randomized clinical trial. At the first among women who were referred to gynecology of Arak, 186 women with FCC between 18-40 years were selected. The women were randomly classified into three groups. The first group took metformin and the second group as placebo group took vitamin E and the third group did not take any drug during six months. All groups were compared in clinical symptoms based on visual analogue scale (VAS) and the sonographic data also were recorded and compared. Data analysis was performed by unilateral variance, student t and Chi-square. RESULTS: The three groups were not different in aspect of mean of the cysts number, cyst size, tenderness and discharge from breast before the intervention, but after the intervention, there was a significant decrease in metformin group (p value < 0.001) based on variance analysis test. There was not a meaningful difference of pain and the location of cysts between the groups after the intervention. CONCLUSIONS: The present study showed that metformin is effective in treatment of FCC and decreasing of clinical symptoms and imaging items.

Differential expression of TLP, ERF1, and R2R3MYB in annual Medicago species under salinity conditions.

The present study was conducted to evaluate the responses of three annual Medicago species (M. truncatula, M. laciniata, and M. polymorpha) to salinity. We analyzed publicly available microarray data in NCBI pertaining to salinity-response genes in M. truncatula. Our data search identified Tubby C2 (TLP) and ethylene responsive transcription factor 1 (ERF1) as genes that potentially respond to salinity. We evaluated morpho-physiological traits and the expression of the genes in three Medicago species that had been maintained under control and saline conditions. The analysis of morpho-physiological traits showed that M. polymorpha and M. laciniata were more tolerant to salinity than M. truncatula, as they had lower reductions in biomass and dry root weight and lower increases in anthocyanin concentration. The saline conditions caused a significant increase (P < 0.01) in the expression of TLP in all Medicago species, but caused a significant decrease in the expression of ERF1. Considerable variation in anthocyanin concentrations was found among the three Medicago species. To investigate the cause of this variation, we examined the expression of R2R3MYB, a gene involved in the biosynthesis of anthocyanins. Our analysis showed that saline conditions induced high over-expression of R2R3MYB in all three Medicago spp. The high efficiency of the primer pairs used in qRT-PCR enabled us to compare the expression levels of each gene in the three species. We concluded that the more salt tolerant species showed higher expression of TLP and R2R3MYB under both control and salinity conditions.