Genetic Diversity and Chemical Profile of Rhodophiala bifida Populations from Brazil

Abstract

Rhodophiala bifida (Herb.) Traub, Amaryllidaceae, is a species native to South America known to produce alkaloids with potential pharmacological uses such as montanine, which has anti-inflammatory potential. R. bifida could be applied as a natural source of montanine. It is important to understand the genetic diversity of this species in order to assess the sustainable use of this plant. The aim of this study was to evaluate the genetic diversity and chemical profiles of the two known natural populations of R. bifida in Brazil. This report is the first population genetic study of R. bifida. We studied 93 individuals with six Inter-Simple Sequence Repeats (ISSR) primers. A total of 79 loci were amplified. Our results showed high-population structure (Fst = 0.16), with greatest genetic variation at the intrapopulation level. Genetic analyses separated the individuals of R. bifida into two clusters that corresponded to each of the natural populations. Chemical profile evaluation was carried out on dried bulbs, leaves, flowers, and flower scapes by liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry. Montanine and nangustine were the main metabolites identified in both populations. These alkaloids concentrations differed by population and by plant part.

Specialized metabolites of the genus Zephyranthes Herb.: a critical review on taxonomy and phytochemistry

“…Later, Brazilian research groups studied this plant from different angles (Castilhos et al 2007;de Andrade et al 2016;Farinon et al 2017;Reis et al 2019;Schwedersky et al 2020). Their works are summarized in several papers, but only two presented the actual isolation of a single alkaloid (Castilhos et al 2007;Farinon et al 2017).…”

Caracterización de semillas y plántulas de Zephyranthes bifida (Amaryllidaceae)

“…Existen varios estudios sobre Z. bifida referidos a su germinación (Echeverría & Alonso, 2010; Acosta et al, 2021a), biología reproductiva (Facciuto et al, 2021), diversidad genética (Schwedersky et al, 2020) y mayormente a sus alcaloides de interés medicinal (Castilhos et al, 2007;Farinon et al, 2017;Reis et al, 2019). Como parte de trabajos publicados que incluyen otras especies, se han realizado descripciones morfológicas del bulbo, hojas, escapo, flores, frutos y semillas de Z. bifida (Arroyo, 1984;Hurrell & Roitman, 2009;García et al, 2019), pero en ninguno de los casos se profundizó en el estudio de sus plántulas, la morfología de sus embriones, ni la naturaleza de las reservas de sus semillas.…”