RESUMO
Ginseng is a well-known traditional medicine used in Asian countries for several thousand years, and it is currently applied to medicine, cosmetics, and nutritional supplements due to its many healing and energygiving properties. It is well demonstrated that ginsenosides, the main ingredient of ginseng, produce a variety of pharmacological and therapeutic effects on central nerve system (CNS) disorders, cardiovascular disease, endocrine secretions, aging, and immune function. Korean red ginseng extract is a dietary supplement containing ginsenoside Rb1 and ginsenoside Rg1 extracted from Panax ginseng. While the pharmacokinetics and bioavailability of the extract have been well established, its toxicological properties remain obscure. Thus, four-week oral toxicity studies in rats were conducted to investigate whether Korean red ginseng extract could have a potential toxicity to humans. The test article was administered once daily by oral gavage to four groups of male and female Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats at dose levels of 0, 500, 1,000, and 2,000 mg/kg/day for four weeks. Neither deaths nor clinical symptoms were observed in any group during the experiment. Furthermore, no abnormalities in body weight, food consumption, ophthalmology, urinalysis, hematology, serum biochemistry, gross findings, organ weights, or histopathology were revealed related to the administration of the test article in either sex of any dosed group. Therefore, a target organ was not determined in this study, and the no observed adverse effect level (NOAEL) of Korean red ginseng extract was established to be 2,000 mg/kg/day.
RESUMO
Genes related with defense responses were screened from the cDNA library constructed with Rhizobium vitis-inoculated or salicylic acid (SA)-treated 'Tamnara' grapevine (Vitis sp.) leaves. Among 13,728 expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from 'Tamnara' grapevine upon R. vitis inoculation and SA treatment, 6776 unigenes containing 1915 contigs and 4860 singletons were obtained. In gene ontology analysis, there were about 3200 clones related with biological process, 3555 with molecular function, and 3354 with cellular component genes. Proteins of secretory organ (35%), plasma membrane (30%), endoplasmic reticulum (20%), and vacuole (11%) were predicted. Photosynthesis-related genes and defense-related genes were most abundant. Among ESTs, 199 resistance-related ones were mapped to the genome of Vitis vinifera L. with three markers, GLP1-12, MHD98, and MHD145, which are known to be linked to resistance against powdery mildew. Approximately, 120 simple sequence repeats (SSRs) detected in cDNAs could be used as EST-derived SSR markers in disease resistant grape breeding.