Context: Medicinal plants are nature′s gift to human beings to make disease free healthy life, and play a vital role to preserve our health. They are believed to be much safer and proven elixir in the treatment of various ailments. The genus Artemisia (Astraceae) consists of about 500 species, occurring throughout the world. The present review comprises the ethnopharmacological, phytochemical and therapeutic potential of various species of Artemisia.Objective: The aim of this this review is to bring together most of the available scientific research conducted on the genus Artemisia, which is currently scattered across various publications. Through this review the authors hope to attract the attention of natural product researchers throughout the world to focus on the unexplored potential of Artemisia species.Methods: This review has been compiled using references from major databases such as Chemical Abstracts, Medicinal and Aromatic Plants Abstracts, ScienceDirect, SciFinder, PubMed, King′s American Disp...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.3109/13880209.2010.497815

The genus Artemisia: a comprehensive review.

Screening of the ethnobotenical plants is a pre-requisite to evaluate their therapeutic potential and it can lead to the isolation of new bioactive compounds. The crude extracts and fractions of six medicinal important plants (Arisaema flavum, Debregeasia salicifolia, Carissa opaca, Pistacia integerrima, Aesculus indica, and Toona ciliata) were tested against three Gram positive and two Gram negative ATCC bacterial species using the agar well diffusion method. The crude extract of P. integerrima and A. indica were active against all tested bacterial strains (12-23 mm zone of inhibition). Other four plant's crude extracts (Arisaema flavum, Debregeasia salicifolia, Carissa opaca, and Toona ciliata) were active against different bacterial strains. The crude extracts showed varying level of bactericidal activity. The aqueous fractions of A. indica and P. integerrima crude extract showed maximum activity (19.66 and 16 mm, respectively) against B. subtilis, while the chloroform fractions of T. ciliata and D. salicifolia presented good antibacterial activities (13-17 mm zone of inhibition) against all the bacterial cultures tested. The methanol fraction of Pistacia integerrima, chloroform fractions of Debregeasia salicifolia & Toona ciliata and aqueous fraction of Aesculus indica are suitable candidates for the development of novel antibacterial compounds.

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Antibacterial activity of some selected medicinal plants of Pakistan

The latest advances in high-throughput techniques during the past decade allowed the systems biology field to expand significantly. Today, the focus of biologists has shifted from the study of individual biological components to the study of complex biological systems and their dynamics at a larger scale. Through the discovery of novel bioentity relationships, researchers reveal new information about biological functions and processes. Graphs are widely used to represent bioentities such as proteins, genes, small molecules, ligands, and others such as nodes and their connections as edges within a network. In this review, special focus is given to the usability of bipartite graphs and their impact on the field of network biology and medicine. Furthermore, their topological properties and how these can be applied to certain biological case studies are discussed. Finally, available methodologies and software are presented, and useful insights on how bipartite graphs can shape the path toward the solution of challenging biological problems are provided.

Bipartite graphs in systems biology and medicine: a survey of methods and applications.

Diabetes mellitus is a common effect of uncontrolled high blood sugar and it is associated with long-term damage, dysfunction, and failure of various organs. In the adult population, the global prevalence of diabetes has nearly doubled since 1980. Without effective prevention and management programs, the continuing significant rise in diabetes will have grave consequences on the health and lifespan of the world population, and also on the world economy. Supplements can be used to correct nutritional deficiencies or to maintain an adequate intake of certain nutrients. These are often used as treatments for diabetes, sometimes because they have lower costs, or are more accessible or "natural" compared to prescribed medications. Several vitamins, minerals, botanicals, and secondary metabolites have been reported to elicit beneficial effects in hypoglycemic actions in vivo and in vitro; however, the data remain conflicting. Many pharmaceuticals commonly used today are structurally derived from natural compounds from traditional medicinal plants. Botanicals that are most frequently used to help manage blood glucose include: bitter melon (Momordica charantia), fenugreek (Trigonella foenum graecum), gurmar (Gymnema sylvestre), ivy gourd (Coccinia indica), nopal (Opuntia spp.), ginseng, Russian tarragon (Artemisia dracunculus), cinnamon (Cinnamomum cassia), psyllium (Plantago ovata), and garlic (Allium sativum). In majority of the herbal products and secondary metabolites used in treating diabetes, the mechanisms of action involve regulation of insulin signaling pathways, translocation of GLUT-4 receptor and/or activation the PPARγ. Several flavonoids inhibit glucose absorption by inhibiting intestinal α-amylase and α-glucosidase. In-depth studies to validate the efficacies and safeties of extracts of these traditional medicinal plants are needed, and large, well designed, clinical studies need to be carried out before the use of such preparations can be recommended for treatment and/or prevention of diabetes. The main focus of this review is to describe what we know to date of the active compounds in these, along with their glucose-lowering mechanisms, which are either through insulin-mimicking activity or enhanced glucose uptake.

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An Overview of Herbal Products and Secondary Metabolites Used for Management of Type Two Diabetes

Advances in genome-scale molecular biology and molecular genetics have greatly elevated our knowledge on the basic components of human biology and diseases. At the same time, the importance of cellular networks between those biological components is increasingly appreciated. Built upon these recent technological and conceptual advances, a new discipline called the network medicine, an approach to understand human diseases from a network point-of-view, is about to emerge. In this review article, we will survey some recent endeavours along this direction, centred on the concept and applications of the human diseasome and the human disease network. Questions, and partial answers thereof, such as how the connectivity between molecular parts translates into the relationships between the related disorders on a global scale and how central the disease-causing genetic components are in the cellular network, will be discussed. The use of the diseasome in combination with various interactome networks and other disease-related factors is also reviewed.

Exploring the human diseasome: the human disease network

The six organic solvent extracts of Artemisia nilagirica were screened for the potential antimicrobial activity against phytopathogens and clinically important standard reference bacterial strains. The agar disk diffusion method was used to study the antibacterial activity of A. nilagirica extracts against 15 bacterial strains. The Minimum Inhibitory Concentration (MIC) of the plant extracts were tested using two fold agar dilution method at concentrations ranging from 32 to 512 μg/ml. The phytochemical screening of extracts was carried out for major phytochemical derivatives in A. nilagirica. All the extracts showed inhibitory activity for gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria except for Klebsiella pneumoniae, Enterococcus faecalis and Staphylococcus aureus. The hexane extract was found to be effective against all phytopathogens with low MIC of 32 μg/ml and the methanol extract exhibited a higher inhibition activity against Escherichia coli, Yersinia enterocolitica, Salmonella typhi, Enterobacter aerogenes, Proteus vulgaris, Pseudomonas aeruginosa (32 μg/ml), Bacillus subtilis (64 μg/ml) and Shigella flaxneri (128 μg/ml). The phytochemical screening of extracts answered for the major derivative of alkaloids, amino acids, flavonoids, phenol, quinines, tannins and terpenoids. All the extracts showed antibacterial activity against the tested strains. Of all, methanol and hexane extracts showed high inhibition against clinical and phytopathogens, respectively. The results also indicate the presence of major phytochemical derivatives in the A. nilagirica extracts. Hence, the isolation and purification of therapeutic potential compounds from A. nilagirica could be used as an effective source against bacterial diseases in human and plants.

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Antibacterial activity of Artemisia nilagirica leaf extracts against clinical and phytopathogenic bacteria

Background
Artemisia parviflora leaf extracts were evaluated for potential antimicrobial and antioxidant properties. Antimicrobial susceptibility assay was performed against ten standard reference bacterial strains. Antioxidant activity was analyzed using the ferric thiocyanate and 2, 2-Diphenyl-1-Picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) assays. Radical scavenging activity and total phenolic content were compared. Phytochemical analyses were performed to identify the major bioactive constitution of the plant extract.

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In vitro antimicrobial activity on clinical microbial strains and antioxidant properties of Artemisia parviflora

Systems biological approach of molecular connectivity map has reached to a great interest to understand the gene functional similarities between the diseases. In this study, we developed a computational framework to build molecular connectivity maps by integrating mutated and differentially expressed genes of neurological and psychiatric diseases to determine its relationship with aging. The systematic large-scale analyses of 124 human diseases create three classes of molecular connectivity maps. First, molecular interaction of disease protein network generates 3632 proteins with 6172 interactions, which determines the common genes/proteins between diseases. Second, Disease-disease network includes 4845 positively scored disease-disease relationships. The comparison of these disease-disease pairs with Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) classification tree suggests 25% of the disease-disease pairs were in same disease area. The remaining can be a novel disease-disease relationship based on gene/protein similarity. Inclusion of aging genes set showed 79 neurological and 20 psychiatric diseases have the strong association with aging. Third and lastly, a curated disease biomarker network was created by relating the proteins/genes in specific disease contexts, such analysis showed 73 markers for 24 diseases. Further, the overall quality of the results was achieved by a series of statistical methods, to avoid insignificant data in biological networks. This study improves the understanding of the complex interactions that occur between neurological and psychiatric diseases with aging, which lead to determine the diagnostic markers. Also, the disease-disease association results could be helpful to determine the symptom relationships between neurological and psychiatric diseases. Together, our study presents many research opportunities in post-genomic biomarkers development.

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Systems biological approach on neurological disorders: a novel molecular connectivity to aging and psychiatric diseases

A series of 47, 4-arylthieno[3, 2-d] pyrimidine derivatives was subjected to quantitative structure-antiparkinson activity relationships (QSAR) studies to evaluate the antagonist activity towards both adenosine A1 and adenosine A2A targets in Parkinson's drug discovery. QSAR models were derived with the aid of genetic function approximation (GFA) technique using descriptors to make connections between structural parameters and antiparkinson's activity followed by ADMET analysis and pharmacophore model generation. QSAR model was assessed using a test set of 12 compounds for A1 (r2 pred = 0.961), (q2 = 0.912) and 12 compounds for A2a (r2 pred = 0.914), (q2 = 0.781) receptor. The results revealed the significant role of DIPOLE MAG, CHI-V-3-P, WIENER, AREA, SC-2 and PHI-MAG descriptors in the antiparkinson activity of the studied compounds against adenosine A1 and adenosine A2A receptors. Subsequent, ADMET analysis shows 28 compounds can be the better candidates of drug and execution of pharmacophore model, explores the hydrogen bond donor, aromatic ring and hydrophobic groups are the key structural features for the antagonist activity.

Abdul R Ahameethunisa

Papers

Antibacterial activity of Artemisia nilagirica leaf extracts against clinical and phytopathogenic bacteria

In vitro antimicrobial activity on clinical microbial strains and antioxidant properties of Artemisia parviflora

Systems biological approach on neurological disorders: a novel molecular connectivity to aging and psychiatric diseases

QSAR AND PHARMACOPHORE MODELING OF 4-ARYLTHIENO [3, 2-d] PYRIMIDINE DERIVATIVES AGAINST ADENOSINE RECEPTOR OF PARKINSON'S DISEASE