Aleya Ferdausi, Xianmin Chang, Anthony Hall and Meriel Jones
Posters-Accepted Abstracts: Biol Syst Open Access
The Amaryllidaceae alkaloids example galantamine, lycorine and narciclasine are noted for their pharmaceutical properties. Galanthamine is a long acting, selective, reversible and competitive acetylcholinesterase inhibitor approved for the treatment of early to mild stage Alzheimer��?s diseases in the UK. It is currently obtained from plant material (especially Narcissus, Galanthus, Leucojum and Lycoris species including collected from the wild) since total chemical synthesis is not economic. The UK is one of the major producers in the world of Narcissus but cultivars have been selected for flower rather than alkaloid production. The biosynthesis of alkaloids by plants using in vitro systems has been considered as tools for drug discovery and production. The biosynthetic pathways especially for galantamine are starting to be understood but are still far from complete. Two important steps towards the goal of improved yields from whole plant or cell culture systems are identification of genes and their alkaloid products and also developing culture systems for optimized alkaloid production. We are using a combination of transcriptomics for gene discovery within different daffodil cultivars and tissues towards this goal.
Aleya Ferdausi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Bangladesh Agricultural University. She has completed her Masters degree from the same department of the same University. She has been awarded study leave and a Commonwealth Scholarship to pursue her PhD in the UK at the Institute of Integrative Biology, University of Liverpool.
