Jeanmaire Molina

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at Pace University

Rafflesia is a genus of holoparasitic plants endemic to Southeast Asia that has lost the ability to undertake photosynthesis. With short-read sequencing technology, we assembled a draft sequence of the mitochondrial genome of Rafflesia lagascae Blanco, a species endemic to the Philippine island of Luzon, with ∼350× sequencing depth coverage. Using...

Asian rice, Oryza sativa, is one of world's oldest and most important crop species. Rice is believed to have been domesticated ∼9,000 y ago, although debate on its origin remains contentious. A single-origin model suggests that two main subspecies of Asian rice, indica and japonica, were domesticated from the wild rice O. rufipogon. In contrast, th...

Leea, sometimes treated as the monogeneric family Leeaceae, is sister to the rest of the grape family, Vitaceae, but its systematics is poorly known. Phylogenetic relationships in Leea were reconstructed with parsimony and Bayesian methods using nuclear ribosomal sequences to assess species circumscriptions, morphological evolution and biogeography...

Psychoactive plants contain chemicals that presumably evolved as allelochemicals but target certain neuronal receptors when consumed by humans, altering perception, emotion and cognition. These plants have been used since ancient times as medicines and in the context of religious rituals for their various psychoactive effects (e.g., as hallucinogen...

The Philippine government established the Traditional and Alternative Medicine Act in 1997 to promote traditionally used herbal products and to provide an effective yet affordable alternative to conventional medicines. However, government regulation of herbal medicinal products (HMPs) is not stringent, relying only on submitted quality data from th...

Rafflesia, known for producing the world’s largest flowers, is a holoparasite found only in Southeast Asia's rapidly diminishing tropical forests. Completely dependent on its Tetrastigma host plants, Rafflesia grows covertly within its host until flowering, but the ecological factors driving host susceptibility are unknown. With most Rafflesia spec...

Rafflesiaceae is a family of endangered plants whose members are solely parasitic to the tropical grape vine Tetrastigma (Vitaceae). Currently, the genetics of their crosstalk with the host remains unexplored. In this study, we use homology-based in silico approaches to characterize micro-RNAs (miRNAs) expressed by Sapria himalayana and Rafflesia c...

Rafflesia is an endangered endophytic holoparasitic plant that lives the majority of its life inside the tissues of its sole plant host, Tetrastigma. Rafflesia floral buds emerge to produce the world’s largest single flower. Like other plants, holoparasites harbor a diverse microbiome, the role(s) of which has remained largely unstudied. We charact...

Societal Impact Statement Rafflesia is a genus of parasitic plants with the largest flowers in the world, unique to the threatened forest habitats of tropical Asia. Here, we report on genes that are active (the transcriptome) in Rafflesia seeds as part of a larger effort to understand Rafflesia. Rafflesia has never been grown successfully outside o...

Main conclusion Metabolites in Rafflesia -infected and non-infected Tetrastigma were compared which may have applications in Rafflesia propagation. Benzylisoquinoline alkaloids, here reported for the first time in Vitaceae, were abundant in non-infected shoots and may be a form of defense. In Rafflesia -infected shoots, oxylipins, which mediate imm...

Strychnos is a pantropical genus of Loganiaceae (Gentianales), with approximately 200 species, that lacks a detailed worldwide phylogenetic understanding until now. We investigated the global phylogeny of the majority of Strychnos species, and evaluated morphologicaland key character patterns to discuss congruence between phylogenetic clades and se...

Rafflesia produces the largest single flowers in the world, at the expense of its host vine, Tetrastigma, yet it begins as an inconspicuous endophyte. It is unknown how the Rafflesia seed gets into the host and germinates. Multiple locals claim to have successfully grown the holoparasitic flower from seeds resulting in blooms. Using available morph...

Aim: The goal of this study was to use phylogenetic evidence to determine plant families with high representation of antibacterial activity and identify potential sources to focus on for antibacterial drug discovery. Materials & methods: We reconstructed the molecular phylogeny of plant taxa with antibacterial activity and mapped antibacterial m...

Herbal medicinal products (HMPs) have grown increasingly popular in the United States, many of them with imported raw materials and sold online. Yet due to the lack of regulation from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), manufacturers of the products can substitute or add in other herbs that are not advertised on the label. In this study, as...

Context: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the number one cause of death globally, responsible for over 17 million (31%) deaths in the world. Novel pharmacological interventions may be needed given the high prevalence of CVD. Objective: In this study, we aimed to find potential new sources of cardiovascular (CV) drugs from phylogenetic and pharmacolo...

The large-flowered parasitic genus Rafflesia R.Br. (Rafflesiaceae) has long fascinated naturalists and scientists and is an iconic symbol for plant conservation. Techniques to effectively propagate members of the genus outside of their natural habitat are sparse, and grafting infected Tetrastigma K.Schum.(Vitaceae) host plants has previously been r...

Asian wild rice (Oryza rufipogon) that ranges widely across the eastern and southern part of Asia is recognized as the direct ancestor of cultivated Asian rice (O. sativa). Studies of the geographic structure of O. rufipogon, based on chloroplast and low-copy nuclear markers, reveal a possible phylogeographic signal of subdivision in O. rufipogon....

In a recent study using two different methods of analysis and two different datasets, we concluded that domesticated Asian rice had a single origin (1). Ge and Sang (2) suggest that our analyses were flawed and that the origin of rice remains an open question.

Levels of nucleotide variability are frequently positively correlated with recombination rate and negatively associated with gene density due to the effects of selection on linked variation. These relationships are determined by properties that frequently differ among species, including the mating system, and aspects of genome organization such as...

Rice accessions used in this study. (XLS)

Genes associated with sequenced fragments at each QTL and their function. (XLS)

Primers used to amplify the gene fragments used in this study. (XLS)

Oryza sativa or Asian cultivated rice is one of the major cereal grass species domesticated for human food use during the Neolithic. Domestication of this species from the wild grass Oryza rufipogon was accompanied by changes in several traits, including seed shattering, percent seed set, tillering, grain weight, and flowering time. Quantitative tr...

Understanding how crop species spread and are introduced to new areas provides insights into the nature of species range expansions. The domesticated species Oryza sativa or Asian rice is one of the key domesticated crop species in the world. The island of Madagascar off the coast of East Africa was one of the last major Old World areas of introduc...

The gentians (Gentianaceae, Asteridae) form a morphologically and ecologically diverse group of plants with interesting phytochemical and medicinal properties. The family contains six tribes, but phylogenetic relationships among the three more derived tribes (Gentianeae, Helieae, and Potalieae) are considered ambiguous. In an attempt to resolve ali...

I observed the floral biology of three Leea morphospecies in a Philippine natural forest habitat. The red-flowered morphospecies Leea guineensis limits selfing through synchronized dichogamy, with male and female flowers temporally separated in the same inflorescence, whereas the two morphospecies of the white-flowered Leea indica might be prone to...

Symbolanthus (Gentianaceae; ring‐gentians) is a neotropical, montane plant genus with over 30 species, distinct in having large tubular flowers with an interior corona at the base of the stamens. The genus was previously thought to include only three species in the Andes, the widespread S. calygonus (with 20 morphotypes) and the narrow endemics S....

The New Caledonian species Couthovia novocaledonica Gilg & Benedict (Loganiceae) is supported as a species distinct from Neuburgia corynocarpa (A.Gray) Leenh. Neuburgia novocaledonica is different in having domatia on its abaxial leaf surfaces, two rings of hairs within the corolla tube, and generally obovate leaf shape. Therefore, the new combinat...