J. Nat. Prod. ：植物中发现女性孕酮激素

美国伊利诺斯州立大学的研究人员称首次在植物中发现了女性孕酮激素。Guido F. Pauli和他的同事称他们在核桃中发现了孕酮，这让科学家们感到十分惊奇，因为一般认为只有动物才会产生这种甾类激素。孕酮是一种由卵巢分泌的甾类激素，它能使子宫做好受孕准备。避孕药和其它一些药物中常会使用人工合成孕酮。 “明确鉴定孕酮的意义怎么强调也不过分，”Pauli及其同事在Journal of Natural Products杂志中写道，“尽管这种物质在动物中的生物作用已经得到广泛研究，但其出现在植物中的原因却不消楚。”他们猜测这种激素可能与其它甾类激素一样，是一种在现代植物和动物出现之前就已经存在的古老的生物调节剂，已经经历了数十亿年的进化。这一新发现可能会改变科学家对孕酮的进化及在生物体中所起作用的认识。(生物谷Bioon.com) 生物谷推荐原文出处： J. Nat. Prod. DOI: 10.1021/np9007415 Occurrence of Progesterone and Related Animal Steroids in Two Higher Plants Guido F. Pauli, J. Brent Friesen, Tanja Gdecke, Norman R. Farnsworth and Bernhard Glodny Department of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy and Program for Collaborative Research in the Pharmaceutical Sciences and Institute for Tuberculosis Research, College of Pharmacy, University of Illinois at Chicago, 833 S. Wood Street, Chicago, Illinois 60612, Department of Natural Science, Rosary College of Arts and Sciences, Dominican University, River Forest, Illinois 60305, and Department of Radiology, Innsbruck Medical University, Anichstrasse 35, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria Previously, the presence of a wide variety of chemically diverse steroids has been identified in both flora and fauna. Despite the relatively small differences in chemical structures and large differences in physiological function of steroids, new discoveries indicate that plants and animals are more closely related than previously thought. In this regard, the present study gathers supporting evidence for shared phylogenetic roots of structurally similar steroids produced by these two eukaryotic taxa. Definitive proof for the presence of progesterone (3) in a vascular plant, Juglans regia, is provided. Additional evidence is gleaned from the characterization of five new plant steroids from Adonis aleppica: three 3-O-sulfated pregnenolones (6a/b, 7), a sulfated H-5β cardenolide, strophanthidin-3-O-sulfate (8), and spirophanthigenin (10), a novel C-18 oxygenated spirocyclic derivative of strophanthidin. The ab initio isolation and structure elucidation (NMR, MS) of these genuine minor plant steroids offers information on preparative metabolomic profiling at the ppm level and provides striking evidence for the conserved structural space of pregnanes and its congeners across the phylogenetic tree.