Flavonolignans from Avena sativa

Three flavonolignans derived from the flavone tricin were isolated from Avena sativa herb. This is the first report of the presence of flavonolignans in A. sativa. In the known compounds 1a and 1b, a coniferyl alcohol moiety is linked to the flavone by an ether bond; in the new natural product 2, it is linked by C-C bonds. Structure elucidation of compound 2 was performed by 1D and 2D NMR experiments, and the absolute configuration was determined from circular dichroic data.     

Identification and validation of commonly overexpressed genes in solid tumors by comparison of microarray data

Cancers originating from epithelial cells are the most common malignancies. No common expression profile of solid tumors compared to normal tissues has been described so far. Therefore we were interested if genes differentially expressed in the majority of carcinomas could be identified using bioinformatic methods. Complete data sets were downloaded for carcinomas of the prostate, breast, lung, ovary, colon, pancreas, stomach, bladder, liver, and kidney, and were subjected to an expression analysis using SAM. In each experiment, a gene was scored as differentially expressed if the q value was below 25%. Probe identifiers were unified by comparing the respective probe sequences to the Unigene build 155 using BlastN. To obtain differentially expressed genes within the set of analyzed carcinomas, the number of experiments in which differential expression was observed was counted. Differential expression was assigned to genes if they were differentially expressed in at least eight experiments of tumors from different origin. The identified candidate genes ADRM1, EBNA1BP2, FDPS, FOXM1, H2AFX, HDAC3, IRAK1, and YY1 were subjected to further validation. Using this comparative approach, 100 genes were identified as upregulated and 21 genes as downregulated in the carcinomas.     

Bisnorditerpene, norditerpene, and lipo-alkaloids from Aconitum toxicum

From the roots of Aconitum toxicum, acotoxicine (1), a new bisnorditerpene alkaloid, was isolated together with the structurally related delavaconitine, delavaconine, dolaconine, aconosine, and the norditerpene alkaloid neolinine. The structure of compound 1 was elucidated by spectroscopic data interpretation. Further, eight lipo-alkaloids (2-9) were detected in the plant material by LC-APCI-MSn analysis. This is the first report of a C18 bisnorditerpene alkaloid and lipo-alkaloids from A. toxicum.