Dalea Genus, Chemistry, and Bioactivity Studies

PERALTA MARIANA A; SANTI MARIA D; CABRERA JOSE L.; ORTEGA, MARÍA G.

Studies in Natural Products Chemistry

ELSEVIER

Año: 2019; p. 307 - 341

A presentation of chemical and biological studies on Dalea genus is given in this chapter, spanning from the first chemical report of the North American species D. emoryi A. Gray, D. polyadenia F. Heller, and D. tinctoria Brandegee in 1978, to the recent studies on the South American species Dalea pazensis Rusby in 2017. The natural products isolated from Dalea and their pharmacological activities are introduced. Dalea L. genus comprises 172 species, distributed from Canada to Argentina and Chile, which are found mainly in deserts, grasslands, thorny scrub, tropical dry forest, and tropical mountain forest areas. Ethnobotanical studies reported that these North American species were used by native people such as the Apache and Dakotas, for illnesses like headaches, rheumatism, heart disease, and pneumonia. In Ecuador, the use of Dalea species has been reported for treating stomach ailments. Ethnobotanical and ethnopharmacological investigations have been an important source of information that has led to chemical and pharmacological studies in this genus. From chemical studies, the presence of prenyl flavonoids in North and South American species appears to be relevant not only for the interesting pharmacological properties of these compounds, but also for their potential as chemotaxonomic markers. Pharmacological evaluations in Dalea species have corroborated their medicinal traditional uses. The information presented in this chapter describes the chemical richness of flavonoids metabolites present in Dalea, making this genus a vast area for chemical and pharmacological research.