Laboratory of Plant Chemotaxonomy
The Head of the Laboratory:
Elena NOVOZHILOVA, Ph.D.
Research Team:
Elvira Boyko (Senior Researcher, D.Sc.), Roman Doudkin (Researcher, Ph.D.), Alexey Myagchilov (Researcher, Ph.D.), Natalia Poddubova (Laboratory Assistant)
Key research areas:
Taxonomic and chemical studies on the Far Eastern plants aimed to find potential sources of biologically active substances.
Main results:
The use of triterpenoids, flavonoids, and many other low-molecular natural compounds as chemotaxonomic markers led to a taxonomic revision of a significant number of vascular plant families, including Apiaceae, Campanulaceae, Fabaceae, Asteraceae, Ranunculaceae, Boraginaceae, Betulaceae, and Berberidaceae widely distributed in the Russian Far East. The study objects of the Laboratory have been species of Heracleum, Bupleurum, Caulophyllum, Thalictrum, Aconitum, Serratula, Rhaponticum, and Rosa. Some species of Far Eastern plants that hold a potential for detailed chemical research and industrial applications have been studied as well.
Limonium tetragonium (Thunb.) Bullock was found in the flora of Russia, it also represents a new genus for the Russian Far East. Several new species: Orostachys gorovoii Dudkin & Gontch. (Crassulaceae), Thymus nakhodkensis Gorovoi et Dudkin (Fabaceae), Boechera calcarea Dudkin (Brassicaceae), and a new form of the rabbit-ear iris, or kakitsubata, Iris laevigata f. albo-violacea Dudkin (Iridaceae) were described from the Primorye Territory.
As a result of our research, new diagnostic characters of a number of species of the families Apiaceae, Ranunculaceae, Fabaceae, Betulaceae, and Asteraceae have been revealed. The stock of raw materials of Maackia amurensis and Adonis amurensis was inventoried in the southern districts of Primorye. In the course of karyological and chemotaxonomic studies, karyotypes of all the Far Eastern species of Bupleurum were determined and the hybrid origin of polyploid Bupleurum sibirica was first experimentally proved.
Chromatography research on the Far Eastern species of Saussurea showed the isolation of this genus within the aster family, Asteraceae. The cypsela surface ultrastructure in the species of the tribe Anthemideae (Asteraceae) has been studied for the first time and the taxonomy of this group of plants has been specified.
Flavonoids, ecdysteroids, alkaloids, essential oils of more than 100 species of the Far Eastern flora have been studied and potential sources of these substances have been identified. In the Far Eastern species Serratula manshurica, S. komarovii, Rhaponticum uniflorum, Lychnis fulgens, 20-hydroxyecdysone was found. Flavonoids of the Far Eastern orchids (the genus Cypripedium) were studied for the first time.