Studies On The Chemical Constituents And Bioactivities Of Two Medicinal Plants

This dissertation consists of three parts altogether. The first part reported the chemical constituents (alkaloids) from Huperzia serrata (Thunb.) Trev.. the second part described the isolation and identification of chemical constituents from Selaginella tarmariscina (Beauv.) Spring. In the last part, the natural chemical constituents isolated from the genus Selaginella plants which published in 1970-2006 were summarized and also reviewed pharmacological investigation.As a result, 20 compounds were purified and identified on the basis of spectral methods and X-ray crystallographic analysis, including 6 new compounds. These compounds covered Lycopodium alkaloids, neolignans and biflavonoids.Huperzia serrata (Thunb.) Trev. (Huperziaceae, also named Lycopodium serratatum) is one of the most commonly encountered traditional Chinese herbal medicines for the treatment of contusions, strains, swelling, and schizophrenia. The main constituents of Huperzia serrata were alkaloids including Huperzine A, which was a potent acetylcholinesterase (AChE) inhibitor, and was reported increase efficiency for learning and memory in animals and shows promise in the treatment Alzheimer's disease and myasthenia gravis. As our investigation on chemical and biological constituents of fern, we have investigated the alkaloids of H.serrata collected from Gaungxi province and resulted in the isolation of twelve alkaloids, they were Huperzine A (1) , N-Methyl-huperzine B (2) , Huperzinine (3) , Huperzine C (4) , Lycoclavine (5) , Neohuperzinine (6) , Lycopodatine C (7) , Huperzine E (8) ,Serratatone A(9) , Serratatone B (10), Serratatone C (11) , Compound (12), separately. Compounds 9,10,11,12 are new ones.Selaginella belongs to the family Selaginellaceae , and plants in this genus are used in Chinese traditional medicine for antitumor, easing pain, hemostasising, treating acute hepatitis, strengthening immune and reducing inflammation. Selaginella tarmariscina Spring is known for its super strong vitality to fight drought, calling it "jiusihuanhuncao" in folk, In present study, we have isolated eight compounds from the 70% acetone extract of the whole plant, they are Amentoflavone (1), Tamaridcinane A (2), Ellisinin (3), Tamaridcinane B (5), 5-Benzofurancarboxylic acid-2,3-dihydro-2-(4-hydroxy-3,5-dimethoxyphenyl)-3-(hydroxymethyl)-7-methoxy(6), 4-Acetonyl-3,5-dimethoxy-p-quinol (7),β-sitosterol (8), of which compounds 2 and 5 are new ones.The review covers 41 literatures published to detail the pharmacological investigations and chemical constituents which were mainly isolated in 1970-2006 of Chinese Selaginella species.