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This study was conducted to investigate the herbicidal activity against resistant biotype on sulfonylurea (SU) herbicides such as Scirpus juncoides and Monochoria vaginalis at the glasshouse and paddy rice cultivation area. In order to investigate resistance breakability against SU-resistanted annual weeds, new rice herbicides containing tefuryltrione [p-hydrophenyl pyruvate dioxygenase (HPPD) inhibitor] were tested. In both lab test and field experiment, tefuryltrione mixture, 4-HPPD inhibitor had shown excellent efficacy with a bleaching on the leaves of resistant annual weeds at early time after treatment and showed excellent persistance. Especially, tefuryltrione mixture had shown excellent controlling effect on annual and perennial SU-resistant S. juncoides in the regional field experiment. In phytotoxicity test, this tefuryltrione mixture had shown good selectivity to common rice species.

A chloroform extract of the edible mushroom Pleurotus eryngii showed an inhibitory effect on mammalian DNA topoisomerase I. The topoisomerase I inhibitory compound was purified and identified as ubiquinone-9. Ubiquinone-9 was shown to inhibit the activity of topoisomerase I with IC(50) of about 50 microM. Concentration of 110 microM ubiquinone-9 caused 50% growth inhibition of human leukaemia U937 cells, but not that of normal fibroblast NIH3T3 and 3Y1 cells. Ubiquinone-9-induced cell death was characterised with the cleavage of poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase and pro-caspase 3. Furthermore, ubiquinone-9 induced the fragmentation of DNA into an apoptotic DNA ladder, indicating that the inhibitor triggered apoptosis. The induction of apoptosis by ubiquinone-9 was also confirmed using flow cytometry analysis. Taken together, these results suggest that ubiquinone-9 may function by inhibiting oncogenic disease, at least in part, through the inhibition of topoisomerase I activity.