Chemical Composition and Biological Activities of Essential Oils in the Family Lauraceae: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Abstract

The Lauraceae family is predominantly found in Asia and in the rainforests of the Americas, and consists mostly of aromatic trees. Being an essential oil producer, this family is used in the food, pharmaceutical, and cosmetic industries. This work presents a systematic review of the chemical composition and bioactivity of the essential oils from the Lauraceae family. Medline, Scielo, Web of Science, Lilacs, and Scopus were employed to identify articles published between 2000 and 2018, using “Lauraceae”, “essential oil”, and “biological activity” as key words. From 177 studies identified, 53 met the inclusion criteria. These studies indicated a predominance of the compounds β-caryophyllene and 1,8-cineole in Lauraceae species, and highlighted the antioxidant, antifungal, antibacterial, and anti-inflammatory activities. Essential oils extracted from this family thus have high potential for pharmacological applications.

A CTAB protocol for obtaining high-quality total RNA from cinnamon (Cinnamomum zeylanicum Blume)

“…As we identified, the sticky and slimy nature of the cinnamon is the major barrier for quality nucleic acid isolation. Since Cinnamomum species, in general, possess similar chemical composition and aroma to C. zeylanicum (Lee et al 2015;Damasceno et al 2019;Pandey et al 2020) except coumarin content Fig. 3 Sequence quality of Cinnamon RNA extracted using the modified CTAB RNA extraction protocol.…”

“…While the C. zeylanicum bark consists of cinnamaldehyde, cinnamyl acetate, cinnamic acid, cinnamyl alcohol, and β-Phellandrene (Atish Gursale et al 2010;Zachariah and Leela 2018;Damasceno et al 2019) its leaf consists of eugenol, cinnamaldehyde, cinnamyl acetate, cinnamyl alcohol and linalool (Paranagama et al 2001;Shimna et al 2017;Liyanage et al 2020a). C. zeylanicum possess a diverse chemical profile even in the seedling stage grown in greenhouse conditions (Liyanage et al 2020b).…”

Angelica Sylvestris Var. Sylvestris L.: Essential Oils and Antioxidant Activity Evaluation

“…In particular, practices of phytotherapy and aromatherapy also increase. This has increased the interest of researchers on essential oils [18,[37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44].…”

Vapors of Volatile Plant-Derived Products Significantly Affect the Results of Antimicrobial, Antioxidative and Cytotoxicity Microplate-Based Assays

“…They are isolated using an array of techniques such as expression, distillation, concentration, solvent extraction, and supercritical fluid extraction [3]. Essential oils (EOs), the complex mixtures composed mainly of terpenoids, are important representatives of VPDPs with a characteristic aroma and a flavor typical for certain plant families (e.g., Lauraceae, Myrtaceae, and Zingiberaceae) [4][5][6][7]. Since ancient times, EOs have been used for their medicinal and organoleptic properties.…”

“…Retention indices: Obs = retention indices determined relative to a homologous series of n-alkanes (C8-C40) on a HP-5MS column, Lit = literature RI values[32,33]; 2 C = chemical class: A-aldehydes, DH-diterpene hydrocarbons, E-esters, FA-fatty acid, K-ketones, MH-monoterpene hydrocarbons, MO-oxygenated monoterpenes, O-others, SH-sesquiterpene hydrocarbons; 3 RF = response factor; 4 column = composition of essential oil detected on HP-5MS and DB-HeavyWAX columns; (%) = relative percentage content; c = content is expressed as concentration in milligram per 1 kg of dry plant material;5 identification method: GC/MS = mass spectrum was identical to that of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Library (ver. 2.0.f), RI = the retention index was matching literature database; Std = constituent identity confirmed by coinjection of authentic standards; 6 retention indices were not calculated for compounds identified only by DB-HeavyWAX column; 7 literature data not available; 8 not detected.…”