Last days the weather in Munich was variable. Some days were sunny, other rainy or snowy, but temperature during the day did not drop below 0°C. Today it was amazingly beautiful day with a lot of sun. I realized that there are more and more flowers in bloom ;) Today I was admiring the snowdrops that were growing in a small forest ;)
Snowdrops (Galanthus) belong to the family Amaryllidaceae and they are native to central Europe. An interesting fact about the snowdrops is that their seeds contain special structures known as elaisomes that are rich in lipids and proteins. Why do the snowdrops produce such elaisomes? Well, it is a kind of business ;) Ants like elaisomes. These insects are eating the elaisomes, however they do not harm the seeds. So basically snowdrops provide the food to ants, and what the plants are gaining is seed dispersal ;)
Another interesting fact about the snowdrops is that they contain a lot of chemicals from which some possess medicinal properties. An example is galantamine, a phenanthrene alkaloid, that was for the first time isolated from the snowdrops. Besides the snowdrops, this compound is also present in some other plants such as snowflakes (Leucojum), daffodils (Narcissus) and Lycoris. In medicine galantamine is used to treat dementia in Alzheimer’s disease. Mechanistically, galantamine inhibits acetylcholinesterase and as a result the levels of acetylcholine (neurotransmitter) increase, which slows down the neurological degeneration.
No comments:
Post a Comment