Marchantia polymorpha (Liverwort): Culture and Production of Metabolites
Marchantia polymorpha (Marchantiaceae) is a worldwide-distributed thallus liverwort. The plant is ubiquitous in man-influenced loci throughout cool and warm areas wherever adequate moisture conditions exist. It can usually be found on wet walls, along moi
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1 General Account Marchantia polymorpha (Marchantiaceae) is a worldwide-distributed thallus liverwort. The plant is ubiquitous in man-influenced loci throughout cool and warm areas wherever adequate moisture conditions exist. It can usually be found on wet walls, along moist shores of creeks, and as a weed in greenhouses. Mass proliferation is often observed after forest fires. M. polyorpha (Fig. 1) forms green to deep green thalli with a broken ill-defined dark strip along the mid line, and ventrally pale or weak purplish pigmentation. The thalli are approximately 7.5 to 13 mm wide and 4 to 6 cm long. The thallus surface shows a distinct hexagonal fielding corresponding to the air chambers, and a small pore in the center of each field. Distinct oil cells are distributed in the tissue. The liverwort forms gemma cups on the top ofthe thallus for vegetative reproduction. The plant is dioecious, with tall and slender stalks of male and female receptac1es during the reproductive phase. The antheridiophore, characterizing the male plant, is 1 to 3 cm tall with a shallow lobed disk on the top. The archegoniophore is usually 4.5 to 6.5 cm tall and has a disk similar to the skeleton of an umbrella. The nine rays of the disk contain the spore capsules with yellow spores (Schuster 1992). M. polymorpha was used in the past as a medicinal plant, specifically for the treatment of lung and liver diseases. Nowadays, it is only used in homeopathy (Adam 1992). Bisbibenzyls (see below) from M. polymorpha show interesting pharmacological activities (Asakawa 1990). Furthermore, M. polymorpha is the c1assical prototype of a liverwort. Therefore, it is frequently used in physiological and genetical studies of bryophytes and for the comparison of higher and lower plants.
2 Chemical Constituents ( Fig. 2) A large number of new natural products have been reported in the past years, mainly from field-collected plant material. A large series of sesquiterpene hydro1 FR 12.3, Pharmakognosie und Analytische Phytochemie der Universität des Saariandes, 66041 Saarbrücken, Germany
Biotechno1ogy in Agriculture and Forestry, Val. 37 Medicinal and Aromatic Plants IX (ed. by Y.P.S. Bajaj) © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 1996
Marchantia polymorpha (Liverwort)
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Fig. I. Aseptic culture of M. polymorpha
carbons are known. They are partially enantiomers to the compounds described from higher plants: (- )-ß-barbatene, ß-cedrene, (+ )-ß-chamigrene, ( - )cuparene, a-cuparene, (- )-b-cuparene, ( - )-b-cuprenene, (+ )-e-Cuprenene, ßelemenene, b-elemenene, eremophilene, a-himachalene, and (+ )-thujopsene. Among the sesquiterpene alcohols, (- )-b-cuprarenol, (- )-cyclopropanecuparenol, (- )-epicyclopropanecuparenol, (- )-2-hydroxycuparene (- )-hydroxyisocuparene, ( - )-herbertenol, ( - )-widdrol, and ent-thujopsan-7 ß-ol have been described so far. Furthermore, three sesquiterpene ketones, ( - )-thujopsenone, ent-a-cyperone, and ent-9-oxo-a-chamigrene, have been reported (Gleizes et al. 1974; Hopkins and Perold 1974; Matsuo et al. 1985; Asakaw
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