Agaric fungi are an important group of macromycetes with diverse ecological and functional properties, yet are poorly studied in many parts of the world. Here, we comprehensively analyzed 558 agaric species in Iran to reveal their resources of edible and poisonous species as well as their ecological guilds and luminescence potential. We also made a thorough survey of the antioxidant activity of the species. Phylogenetic relationships were reconstructed based on nuclear ribosomal LSU and ITS sequences. Our results reveal that agarics of Iran comprise about 189 edible, 128 poisonous, 254 soil saprotrophic, 172 ectomycorrhizal, 146 wood-inhabiting, 18 leaf/litter-inhabiting, 9 parasitic, and 19 luminescent species. Twenty percent of the Iranian agaric species possess antioxidant activity, phylogenetically distributed in four orders and 21 agaric families. About 5% of the antioxidant species can be considered strong antioxidants, many of which are also edible and could be utilized to develop functional foods. This is the first study combining phylogeny and antioxidant potential of agaric mushrooms in a large scale, and the obtained results would guide the selection of agaric taxa to be examined in the future for taxonomic revisions, biotechnological applications, and applied phylogeny studies.

In the present paper, we demonstrate that extract of Cuscuta kotchiana is able to inhibit in vitro proliferation of two human breast cancer cell lines, MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231. The expression levels of p53, bcl-2, caspase-3 and bax genes at the mRNA and protein levels were evaluated using quantitative Real Time PCR and western blot analysis. The most active fractions of C. kotchiana were detected by NMR as pratensein and pratensein glycoside. The cytotoxic activity of pratensein glycoside was significantly more than pratensein. The expression level of bcl2 gene was decreased in cancer cells treated by both compounds at CC50 concentrations. But the expression levels of caspase-3, p53 and bax genes were increased in treated cancer cells. In conclusion, all the data demonstrated that the glycoside form of pratensein is important agent in inducing apoptosis in human breast cancer cells.