The secondary metabolites isolated from Rubia species, their biological activities, and colouration properties have been reviewed. Over 150 chemical constituents belonging to different classes of bioactive compounds such as anthraquinones and their glycosides, naphthoquinones and glycosides, terpenes, bicyclic hexapeptides, iridoids, and carbohydrates are listed together with their source(s) and corresponding references.

Asparagus racemosus (Willd.) is a widely found medicinal plant in tropical and subtropical parts of India. The therapeutic applications of this plant have been reported in Indian and British Pharmacopoeias and in traditional system of medicine, such as Ayurveda, Unani and Siddha. The crude, semi-purified and purified extracts obtained from different parts of this plant have been useful in therapeutic applications. Numerous bioactive phytochemicals mostly saponins and flavonoids have been isolated and identified from this plant which are responsible alone or in combination for various pharmacological activities. This review aims to give a comprehensive overview of traditional applications, current knowledge on the phytochemistry, pharmacology and overuse of A. racemosus.

Hydrolase-catalyzed reactions have been widely applied in organic synthesis. Nitrilases are an important class of hydrolase that converts naturally occurring, as well as xenobiotically derived, nitriles to the corresponding carboxylic acids and ammonia. Because of their inherent enantio- and regioselectivities and other benefits, nitrilases are attractive as 'green', mild, and selective catalysts for setting stereogenic centers in fine-chemical synthesis and enantiospecific synthesis of a variety of carboxylic acid derivatives. In this review, the literature has been surveyed to provide a comprehensive coverage of the application of nitrilases in organic synthesis. Literature has also been cited to describe the isolation and/or characterization of nitrilases and related enzymes.

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The discovery of artemisinin from Chinese medicinal plant, Artemisia annua in 1971, opened a new era in the malarial chemotherapy. This discovery was the beginning of exploring peroxides as potential replacements for the traditional antimalarial drugs such as chloroquine and mefloquine. The structurally simple class of peroxides that emerged from these studies was the 1,2,4,5-tetraoxanes. This study describes the current status of tetraoxane-based antimalarials that show significant promises because of their artemisinin-like activity. Literature from 1999 has been critically reviewed and an attempt has been made to discuss various synthetic methods and structure-activity relationship study among the series of tetraoxane-based compounds. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Med Res Rev.