Publisher's Synopsis
Biological pigments, also known simply as pigments or biochromes are substances produced by living organisms that have a color resulting from selective color absorption. Biological pigments include plant pigments and flower pigments. Many biological structures, such as skin, eyes, feathers, fur and hair contain pigments such as melanin in specialized cells called chromatophores. There are two major classes of flower pigments: carotenoids and flavonoids. Carotenoids include carotene pigments (which produce yellow, orange and red colors). Flavonoids include anthocyanin pigments (which produce red, purple, magenta and blue colors). Usually, the color a flower appears depends on the color of the pigments in the flower, but this can be affected by other factors. The book, Pigments of Flowering Plants, deals with the pigments associated to flower colors. In first chapter, we report the performance of four natural dyes extracted from the leaves of teak (Tectona grandis), tamarind (Tamarindus indica), eucalyptus (Eucalyptus globulus), and the flower of crimson bottle brush (Callistemon citrinus). Transcriptomic analysis of Paeonia Delavayi wild population flowers to identify differentially expressed genes involved in purple-red and yellow petal pigmentation has been presented in second chapter. Third chapter provides fundamental information on the genes and pathways involved in flower secondary metabolism and development in S. oblata, providing a useful database for further research on S. oblata and other plants of genus Syringa. Fourth chapter attempts to reconstruct the betalain biosynthetic pathway as a self-contained system in an anthocyanin-producing plant species. Fifth chapter focuses on peace, a myb-like transcription factor, regulates petal pigmentation in flowering peach 'genpei' bearing variegated and fully pigmented flowers. Sixth chapter characterizes the subclass of type II OMTs by integrating biochemical, molecular, and phytochemical analysis, which will support an understanding of the anthocyanin methylating mechanism and shed light on its influence on flower coloration. In seventh chapter, two P1 orthologues, Gt MYBP3 and Gt MYBP4, were isolated and characterized in Japanese gentian. Eighth chapter confirm the importance of the methionine residue and demonstrate the utility of the dominant-negative CHS in modulating flower colour intensity even in a distantly related species. In ninth chapter, the first RNA-Seq project for M. armeniacum and its white variant was performed using the Illumina sequencing technique. Through a combination of chemical analysis with bioinformatics, the major metabolic pathways related to Muscari flower pigmentation were deduced and the candidate genes targeting the loss of pigmentation in the plants were examined.
