Sugar-derivatives of potassium lespedezate, artificial leaf-opening substances of Lespedeza cuneata G. Don, designed for the bioorganic studies of nyctinasty

✍ Scribed by Minoru Ueda; Yoshiyuki Sawai; Shosuke Yamamura

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: French
• Weight: 201 KB
• Volume: 40
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0040-4039
• DOI: 10.1016/s0040-4039(99)00602-4

✦ Synopsis

Potassium lespedezate (1) is the leaf-opening substance of a nyctinastic plant, Lespedeza cuneata G. Don. We synthesized two sugar-derivatives of 1, potassium galactolespedezate (2) and mannoisolespedezate(3). Both 2 and 3 were quite effective for the leaf--opening of L. cuneata, at 8 x 10 -7 M, as strong as 1. However, 1 kept the leaf open only for a few days; on the other hand, 2 and 3 kept the leaf open after a week at that concentration. Thus, it is assumed that 2 and 3 could not be hydrolyzed by ~glucosidase in the plant body, and are therefore potentially useful molecular probes for the studies of the control of the nyctinastic leaf-movement by a biological clock.