Perezone, a sesquiterpenic benzoquinone with diverse medicinal properties, accumulates in the roots of Acourtia species. In this time-dependent study, the production of perezone was followed in A. cordata culture systems of plants kept in vitro or acclimated and grown in pots. Perezone was characterized by several analytical methods, using the crystallized compound isolated from roots of wild plants as standard. A procedure was developed for its selective quantification, which considers the specific bathochromic shift of the absorbance band in the visible region between the spectra of perezone in its non-ionic and ionic forms, with intensity directly proportional to concentration. In vitro, perezone was recovered from A. cordata roots in average amounts of 5.21 mg g−1 dry weight. Contrastingly, in plants under ex vitro conditions, perezone in roots increased logarithmically, rising from an average of 2.4 mg g−1 dry weight at the 12th week, to 43.6 mg g−1 dry weight at the 31st week, an amount comparable to wild plants. These findings show the feasibility of in vitro and ex vitro culture systems to propagate and conserve the germplasm of perezone-producing Acourtia plants, and a fast and reliable method for the quantification of this valuable compound.
Clave para la identificación de las especies de Bursera Jacq. ex L. (Burseraceae) del Estado de Oaxaca (México). Key for the identification of the species of Bursera Jacq. ex L. (Burseraceae) of the state of Oaxaca (Mexico).
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.