Pyrrolizidines leguminosae family

There are numerous plants containing pyrrolizidine alkaloids (PAs) and they mainly belong to the Boraginaceae, Compositae and Leguminosae families [31,47, 48],... 

We knew Utetheisa to feed on poisonous plants as a larva (Figure 1B). The plants, of the genus Crotalaria (family Leguminosae), were known to contain pyrrolizidine alkaloids (henceforth abbreviated as PAs), intensely bitter compounds potently hepatotoxic to mammals (7). Other species of Utetheisa were known to sequester PAs (8). We found this to be true for U. ornatrix as well. Adult Utetheisa raised on Crotalaria spectabilis, one of the principal foodplants available to the moth in the United States, contain on average about 700 p,g of monocrotaline (1), the principal PA in that plant (9, 10). 

Pyrrolizidine (1) and its derivatives have attracted the attention of chemists during the last two or three decades because this bicyclic system occurs in a number of alkaloids from various families of Compositae, Boraginaceae, Leguminosae, etc. Structural analysis of these substances, study of their reactions, and attempted syntheses have afforded considerable information concerning the chemistry of this class of compounds. Although the field has been covered by a... 

Pyrrolizidine alkaloids are a large family of similar chemicals found in over 6,000 different species of plants in the Leguminosae, Compositae, and Boraginacae families. For example, plants of the Senecio, Heliotropium, and Crotolaria species, many of which occur as weeds throughout the world, produce these alkaloids. About half of the pyrrolizidine alkaloids have... 

Polyhydroxylated pyrrolizidine alkaloids with a hydroxymethyl substituent at C-3 have been thought to be of very restricted natural occurrence. The alexines and australines have been reported in only two small genera of the Leguminosae (Castanospermum and Alexa). However, a number of such pyrrolizidine alkaloids were found from a quite different family, Hyacinthaceae. In 1999, new polyhydroxylated pyrrolizidines different from... 

Simple bicyclic compounds form a rather small subset of the lupine (or lupin) alkaloids, the overwhelming majority of which have tricyclic or tetracyclic structures based on the quinolizidine motif. These alkaloids are characteristic metabolites of the Papilionoideae, a sub-family of the Leguminosae (Fabaceae), although representative examples have also been isolated from several other plant families. The simple lupine quinolizidines were surveyed in Volume 28 of this treatise (7), while later reviews in Volumes 31 (5) and 47 (9) comprehensively covered all classes of lupine alkaloids, including those containing indolizidine components. Much relevant material is also to be found in the review on the biosynthesis of pyrrolizidine and... 

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