Coca Family

Cocaine is the predominant alkaloid present in the leaves of Erythroxylan coca, a shrub of the coca family Erythroxylaceae. These plants, native to South America, are also cultivated in Africa, South Asia, and Australia for the narcotic value of cocaine. 

Erythroxylacex or Coca Family.—Shrubs Erythroxylon) or trees with alternate, simple, entire, glabrous and pinnately veined leaves. Flowers regular, hermaphroditic, each with five sepals, five hypogy-nous petals, ten stamens and a two- to three-celled ovary subtend-... 

The leaves of Erythroxylon coca, the divine plant of the Incas, contain a local anesthetic and a psychostimulant. Erythroxylaceae is a very small family, represented by two genera, the more important of which is Erythroxylon. They are mostly tropical shrubs with entire leaves and 5-merous flowers, and the fruit is a 1-seeded, reddish drupe resembling that of dogwood. The anatomy of the plants of this family closely resembles that of the Linaceae. Of special interest is the development of papillae on the dorsal surface of the leaves. This is found in most species of Erythroxylon. 

In contrast to TA of the Solanaceae family cocaine from Erythroxylaceae coca contains a substituted 3(1 -hydroxytropanc (3(i-tropinc, pseudotropine) skeleton (ecgonine methyl ester) (Fig. 1). 

Timothy Plowman, heir-designate of Richard Evans Schultes, who was one of the great Amazonian plant collectors and an expert on Coca and the Brunmansia and Brunfelsia families. 

Coca-Cola was originally flavored with extracts from the leaves of the coca plant and the kola nut. Coca is grown in northern South America the Indians of Peru and Bolivia have for centuries chewed the leaves to relieve the pangs of hunger and high mountain cold. The cocaine from the leaves causes local anesthesia of the stomach. It has limited use as a local anesthetic for surgery on the eye, nose, and throat. Unfortunately it is now a widely abused illicit drug. Kola nuts contciin about 3% caffeine as well as a number of other alkaloids. The kola tree is in the same family as the cacao tree from which cocoa cmd chocolate cu-e obtained. Modem cola drinks do not contain cocaine however, Coca-Cola contains 43 mg of caffeine per... 

In Bolivia, cocaine production began to grow in the final quarter of the twentieth century, when landowners who had previously focused on farming soybeans and sugar or grazing cattle on their land instead turned their attention to the harvesting of coca plants. Control soon concentrated in the hands of a few powerful families, who used coca produced locally, as well as paste imported from Peru, and transformed it into the 90 percent pure cocaine base that is then exported, principally to Colombia. 

These alkaloids are from a structural point of view, esters between the alcohols such as tropine in e.g. hyoscyamine and scopine in e.g. scopolamine and different ahphatic and aromatic acids, mainly tropic acid. The tropane alkaloids within the family Solanaceae belong mainly to the tropine series, whereas the Coca-alkaloids from the family Erythroxylaceae mainly belong to the pseudo-tropine series. 

Khoka, Cuca, Coca, or Spadie, the latter a corruption of the Brazilian word Ypadii or Ipadii, is of the natural family Erythroxylaceae, formerly Linaceae. It belongs to the genus Erythroxylum P. Br. which contains numerous species, the majority natives of tropical South America and the West Indies, although some are found in Madagascar and the Mauritius. 

The tropane alkaloids represent from pharmaceutical point of view one of the most important groups of alkaloids, on the one hand because of the alkaloids atropine (5) and scopolamine (6), both widely used in pharmacotherapy, and on the other hand because of cocaine, most known for is its abuse as a stimulant. The former two alkaloids are extracted from a variety of Solanaceae, and the latter alkaloid is isolated from the leaves of Erythro-xylon coca. For the plant cell and tissue culture of the latter plant we have not been able to find any literature. For the Solanaceae, however, many studies have been published. Several genera of this family have been studied extensively, for example, Anisodus, Atropa, Datura, Duboisia, Hyoscyamus, and Scopolia. Of these Datura has widely been used as a model system for the development of various techniques in plant cell and tissue culture and for basic studies of cultured plant cells, without reference to alkaloid production. 

The Pyrrolidine Family. The alkaloid hygrine (3.7) isolated from leaves of plants from the Coca group is an example of a simple pyrrolidine derivative. It and other members of this family have been found to originate from the amino acid ornithine (Scheme 3.6). 

Structure occurrence The T. a. occur principally in plants of the Solanaceae, Convolvulaceae, Eryth-roxylaceae, Proteaceae, and Rhizophoraceae families as well as in isolated species of the Euphorbiaceae and Brassicaceae. The most important of the ca. 140 known T. a. are either esters of 3a-tropanol (tropine) or, less commonly, of 3/S-tropanol (pseudotropine). Prominent examples are the T. a. of the Solanaceae hyoscya-mine [racemate ( )-hyoscyamine= atropine], scopolamine, and the T. a. of the Erythroxylaceae (Coca... 

Barex The trade name for BP Chemical International s (Sohia Division) family of acrylonitrile (AN) copolymerized styrene plastic. It was the first technically and commercially successful carbonated beverage bottle to be produced and was used in producing the first Coca-Cola stretched injection blow-molded bottles. See Coca-Cola bottle, barium oxide (BaO) A white to yellow powder that melts at 192°C. It forms a hydroxide with water and is used as a dehydrating agent. Also called barium monoxide or barium protoxide. 

As Morgan and Curran (1995) pointed out, constitutive expression by members of the Fos family may be related to constant activity of a tissue. Such constant activity may result from extrinsic or intrinsic stimuli, or both. To investigate the possibility that our Fos-like immunoreactivity might be due to continual sensory stimulation, we employed naris closure to inhibit access of stimulus chemicals to the VNO. Since the opening of the VNO in rodents is on the floor of the nasal cavity inside the nostril (Wysocki, 1979 Gar-rosa. Coca Mora, 1986), and this opening appears to be the only access for stimuli... 

As already mentioned, (crude) cnscohygrine was the second alkaloid which could already be isolated from the leaves of Erythroxylum coca (Erythroxylaceae) in 1862. Taken into account the rather undeveloped methods in those days this indicates that cnscohygrine must have been present in considerable amounts besides the tropane alkaloid cocaine. In tropane-positive Solanaceae the content of tropane alkaloids outdoes the content of pyrrohdines including cnscohygrine by far. The contrary is true for the sister family Convolvulaceae with few exceptions. Obviously, this is one reason why the latter family is less poisonous compared with the former one. 

This habit is reported to go back to as early as the era of the Inca Empire. It was in the leaves of this tree of the Erythroxylaceae family that cocaine was found. It is one of the major coca alkaloids (24, 45, 163). 

Source Erythroxylum coca Lamarck var. coca (syn. E. chilpei E. Machado), E. coca var. ipadu Plowman E. novogranatense var. novogranatense Rushy var. novogranatense, E. novogranatense war. truxillense (Rushy) Plowman (syn. E. hardinii E. Machado) (Family Erythroxylaceae). 

Outside the Solanaceae, tropane alkaloids occur in two other plant families. Within the Erythroxylaceae, the genus Erythroxylum comprises about 200 widely distributed, tropical species found mainly in South America and Madagascar. Peruvian coca Erythroxylum coca) is the only plant currently cultivated for cocaine production, which occurs at concentrations between 0.2% and 1% (w/w) in the leaves (Griffin and Lin 2000) (Figure 4.5). A few other Erythroxylum species also produce cocaine, including Trujillo coca E. novogranatense... 

The most known is cocaine, which belongs to the tropane alkaloid family and is obtained from the leaves of the plant Erythroxylon coca, used for centuries by Peruvian Indians to increase endurance and improve well-being. Cocaine is a stimulant of the central nervous system, acts as an appetite suppressant, and produces a euphoric state similar to that induced by amphetamines. Since the mid-twentieth century the recreational use of cocaine has been very diffused worldwide. Some street names are blow, C, candy, Charlie, coke, rock, snow, and toot. Cocaine is available on the street... 

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