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Grain amaranth, an Amaranthacean is a gluten free pseudo-cereal which is grown in many parts of the world including Central and South America. Its high squalene content and unprecedented balance of the essential amino acids, saturated and unsaturated fats and lower amount of carbohydrates makes it a gold standard for functional foods. Its vitamin and mineral contents along with apt ratio of phytochemical constituents provides advantage over other common cereals. Traditionally, grain amaranth has been used to cure various ailments in many countries for ages. Apart from lowering blood cholesterol level, grain amaranth also shows wide spectrum range of pharmacological activities including anti diabetic, anti- inflammatory, antimalarial, anti nociceptive, anti cancer and other activities. While many traditional medicine systems have also mentioned its medicinal importance, this review briefly aims at providing an inclusive overview pertaining to the nutraceutical aspect, chemical composition, analytical aspect, ethanobotanical and pharmacological significance of grain amaranth due to which it can be further explored to gain higher global importance as an alternative crop with enriched nutraceutical properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Withania somnifera (L.) Dunal is a valued medicinal plant with pharmaceutical applications. The present study was undertaken to analyze the salicylic acid induced leaf transcriptome of W. somnifera. A total of 45.6 million reads were generated and the de novo assembly yielded 73,523 transcript contig with average transcript contig length of 1620 bp. A total of 71,062 transcripts were annotated and 53,424 of them were assigned GO terms. Mapping of transcript contigs to biological pathways revealed presence of 182 pathways. Seventeen genes representing 12 pathogenesis-related (PR) families were mined from the transcriptome data and their pattern of expression post 17 and 36 hours of salicylic acid treatment was documented. The analysis revealed significant up-regulation of all families of PR genes by 36 hours post treatment except WsPR10. The relative fold expression of transcripts ranged from 1 fold to 6,532 fold. The two families of peroxidases including the lignin-forming anionic peroxidase (WsL-PRX) and suberization-associated anionic peroxidase (WsS-PRX) recorded maximum expression of 377 fold and 6532 fold respectively, while the expression of WsPR10 was down-regulated by 14 fold. Additionally, the most stable reference gene for normalization of qRT-PCR data was also identified. The effect of SA on the accumulation of major secondary metabolites of W. somnifera including withanoside V, withaferin A and withanolide A was also analyzed and an increase in content of all the three metabolites were detected. This is the first report on expression patterns of PR genes during salicylic acid signaling in W. somnifera. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]