Ishmael Dehghan

University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center | UT Southwestern · Department of Molecular Biology

Therapeutic activation of mitochondrial function has been suggested as an effective strategy to combat aging. Hydralazine is an FDA-approved drug used in the treatment of hyperten-sion, heart failure and cancer. Hydralazine has been recently shown to promote lifespan in C. elegans, rotifer and yeast through a mechanism which has remained elusive. H...

Nuclear factor (erythroid-derived 2)-like 2 and its Caenorhabditis elegans ortholog, SKN-1, are transcription factors that have a pivotal role in the oxidative stress response, cellular homeostasis, and organismal lifespan. Similar to other defense systems, the NRF2-mediated stress response is compromised in aging and neurodegenerative diseases. He...

In this study, the effects of ploidy level and culture medium were studied on the production of tropane alkaloids. We have successfully produced stable tetraploid hairy root lines of Hyoscyamus muticus and their ploidy stability was confirmed 30 months after transformation. Tetraploidy affected the growth rate and alkaloid accumulation in plants an...

Key message: Tetraploidy improves overexpression of h6h and scopolamine production of H. muticus, while in H. senecionis, pmt overexpression and elicitation can be used as effective methods for increasing tropane alkaloids. The effects of metabolic engineering in a polyploid context were studied by overexpression of h6h in the tetraploid hairy roo...

A cDNA encoding hyoscyamine 6β-hydroxylase (H6H, EC 1.14.11.11), a bifunctional enzyme catalyzing the last two steps in the scopolamine biosynthetic pathway, was isolated from Hyoscyamus senecionis, a medicinal plant endemic to the Iranian plateau. Expression analysis indicates that Hsh6h is expressed in all tested organs of H. senecionis including...

Cells sense stress and initiate response pathways to maintain lipid and protein homeostasis. However, the interplay between these adaptive mechanisms is unclear. Herein, we demonstrate how imbalances in cytosolic protein homeostasis affect intracellular lipid surveillance. Independent of its ancient thermo-protective properties, the heat shock fact...

Nuclear speckles are non–membrane-bound organelles known as storage sites for messenger RNA (mRNA) processing and splicing factors. More recently, nuclear speckles have also been implicated in splicing and export of a subset of mRNAs, including the influenza virus M mRNA that encodes proteins required for viral entry, trafficking, and budding. Howe...

Imbalances in lipid homeostasis can have deleterious effects on health1,2. Yet how cells sense metabolic demand due to lipid depletion and respond by increasing nutrient absorption remains unclear. Here we describe a mechanism for intracellular lipid surveillance in Caenorhabditis elegans that involves transcriptional inactivation of the nuclear ho...

The ongoing unprecedented severe acute respiratory syndrome caused by the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak worldwide has highlighted the need for understanding viral-host interactions involved in mechanisms of virulence. Here, we show that the virulence factor Nsp1 protein of SARS-CoV-2 interacts with the host messenger RNA (mRNA) export receptor heterodimer NX...

Owning multiple pharmaceutical functions, plant-derived tropane alkaloids, especially scopolamine, have been widely used in medicine. Significant progress has been made in the production of tropane alkaloids during the past decades via breeding and cultivation of Duboisia cultivates, which are rich in scopolamine. However, unpredicted effects of en...

Nuruozak (Salvia leriifolia Benth), is a perennial herbaceous plant that is endemic to Iran and has recently been introduced as a medicinal plant. Artificial polyploidy is an efficient method to increase the production of secondary metabolites and can result in a whole spectrum of genetic, molecular and physiological modifications. In order to prod...

A simple and efficient procedure was established for in vitro propagation of lattice henbane (Hyoscyamus reticulatus L.) using shoot tip explants cultured on Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium supplemented with N6-benzylaminopurine (BAP) and indolyl-3-acetic acid (IAA). In vitro-induced autotetraploid plants of H. reticulatus L. exhibiting high yield...

Background: Ploidy manipulation is considered an efficient method to increase production potential of medicinally important compounds. Dracocephalum kotschyi Boiss. is an endangered medicinal plant of Iran. Various concentrations of colchicine (0.05, 0.10, 0.20, and 0.50% w/v) were applied to shoot apical meristems of D. kotschyi seedlings in two...

Background Ploidy manipulation is considered an efficient method to increase production potential of medicinally important compounds. Dracocephalum kotschyi Boiss. is an endangered medicinal plant of Iran. Various concentrations of colchicine (0.05, 0.10, 0.20, and 0.50% w/v) were applied to shoot apical meristems of D. kotschyi seedlings in two an...

Polyploidy has played a significant role in the evolutionary history of plants and is a valuable tool for obtaining useful characteristics. Because of the novelty of polyploids, comparison of their in vitro culture response with diploids would be notable. In this study, leaf explants from diploid, autotetraploid and mixoploid plants of Cichorium in...

Polyploidy is one of the widespread phenomena in plant kingdom, which has a vital role in evolution and speciation of plants and is usually accompanied by significant changes in morphology, cell and organ size, expression patterns of genes, respiration and phtotosynthesis, regeneration ability, fertility, biochemistry and metabolom of plants. There...

The artificial induction of polyploidy is an efficient method by which to increase the production of secondary metabolites in various plant species, but it is often accompanied by changes in morphological and phytochemical characteristics. In this study, various concentrations of colchicine [0.00, 0.05, 0.10, 0.25, or 0.50% (w/v)] were applied to t...

تنش های غیر زیستی مانند خشکی، شوری، سرما و دمای بالا از فاکتورهای مهم محدود کننده کشت محصولات زراعی می باشند. بنابراین اصلاح کولتیوارهای اغلب گیاهان زراعی به فاکتورهای تنش زای مختلف جهت افزایش تولیدات کشاورزی ضروری است تا تضمینی بر امنیت غذایی طولانی مدت و تولید پایدار محصولات کشاورزی باشد. مهندسی متابولیک می تواند به عنوان ابزاری مناسب جهت دست ورز...

اهمیت پلی پلوئیدی در جهت افزایش عملکرد و میزان مواد موثره در گیاهان دارویی و معطّر چکیده اهمیت پلی پلوئیدی در کشاورزی به خوبی شناخته شده است. در پروژه های اصلاحی گیاهان دارویی این تکنیک در راستای افزایش میزان مواد موثره و بهبود خصوصیات مرفولوژیک کاربرد فراوانی یافته است. گیاهان دارویی پلی پلوئید سازگاری اکولوژیکی بیشتری داشته که به آنها امکان استق...

More than 12,000 alkaloids are known in plants, mostly used as medicine with a world market value of about 4 billion US$. Opium poppy, Papaver somniferum, is the most important economic source of morphinane alkaloids such as morphine, codeine, thebaine, narcotine and papaverine that are exploited by the pharmaceutical industry as analgesics, antitu...

Isolation of effective genes in morphine biosynthesis for opium poppy metabolic engineering improves and special alkaloid production is too important. Salutaridinol 7-O-acetyltransferase (EC 2.3.1.150) catalyzes the conversion of the phenanthrene alkaloid salutaridinol to salutaridinol-7-O-acetate, the immediate precursor of thebaine along the morp...

Abstract Increasing from day to day tendency of human societies to plant based drug usage increased demand of secondary metabolite application. Although artificial production of these compounds greatly progressed, but the only way to achieve these fine medicinal compounds has been to extract them from plant resources. Alkaloid field, although very...

In this study the tip of meristem in diploid plants (2n = 2x =28) were treated with a 0.2% colchicine solution and flowcytometry was used to determine the DNA ploidy level of different tissues in individual plants. Morphological characteristics such as size and thickness of leaves, flowers, seeds, epidermis and guard cells, as well as the number of...