The anticancer properties of the achiote plant
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.59741/agraria.v22i3.669Keywords:
pigments, metabolites, phytochemical, human health, anticancer.Abstract
Numerous metabolites or chemical compounds that are beneficial to human health are produced by plants. Thus, achiote, or Bixa orellana L., is a tropical plant that has a wide variety of useful chemicals, including cytotoxic, anti-inflammatory, anticancer, antioxidant, antihypertensive, hypoglycemic, and antibacterial properties, to name the most important. Before the Spaniards arrived in Mexico, much of the information about its uses was already known in traditional medicine.
Research on anticancer phytochemicals has shown that achiote seeds are an important source of anticancer metabolites, including bixin, norbixin, geranyl-geranyl, squalene, and B-sitosterol. Research on achiote's anticancer compounds has mostly focused on bixin. However, it is also necessary to study the other compounds of interest, the abundance and type of which depend on the achiote morphotype. To better utilize and exploit the metabolites present in the different morphotypes of achiote, it is essential to understand the genes and their regulatory components that promote or limit the production of these compounds; however, little progress has been made in this study of achiote.
Thanks to massive sequencing technologies, we have the transcriptomes and genomes of achiote, which facilitate the obtaining of more precise molecular markers to associate genotype-phenotype of interest, and in this way each variant or morphotype of achiote can be cultivated according to the relevance of the metabolite it produces. Likewise, this knowledge will allow the generation of improved agronomic varieties of achiote for the optimal utilization of the different morphotypes of achiote and their metabolites.
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