Mosses have been neglected as a study subject for a long time. Recent research shows that mosses contain remarkable and unique substances with high biological activity. The aim of this study, accordingly, was to analyze the composition of mosses and to screen their antimicrobial and anticancer activity. The total concentration of polyphenols and carbohydrates, the amount of dry residue and the radical scavenging activity were determined for a preliminary evaluation of the chemical composition of moss extracts. In order to analyze and identify the substances present in mosses, two types of extrahents (chloroform, ethanol) and the GC/MS and LC-TOF-MS methods were used. The antimicrobial activity was tested on four bacteria strains, and the anticancer activity on six cancer cell lines. The obtained results show the presence of a high number of primary (fatty acids and amino acids), but mainly secondary metabolites in moss extracts—including, sterols, terpenoids, polyphenols and others—and a high activity with respect to the studied test organisms.

A simple, sensitive, precise, and specific reverse HPLC method was developed and validated for the determination of plant hormones in barley (Hordeum vulgareL.). The method includes extraction in aqueous organic solvent followed by solid-phase extraction, sample evaporation, and reversed-phase HPLC analysis in a general purpose UV-visible (abscisic acid (ABA)) and fluorescence detection (indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) and indole-3-pyruvic acid (IPA)), high-performance liquid chromatography system. The separation was carried out on Zorbax Eclipse XDB C8 column (150×4.6 mm I.D) with a mobile phase composed of methanol and 1% acetic acid (60 : 40 v/v) in isocratic mode at a flow rate of 1 ml min^-1. The detection was monitored at 270 nm (ABA) and at 282 nm (Ex) and 360 nm (Em) (IAA, IPA). The developed method was validated in terms of accuracy, precision, linearity, limit of detection, limit of quantification, and robustness. The determined validation parameters are in the commonly acceptable ranges for that kind of analysis.

Although ion fluxes are considered to be an integral part of signal transduction during responses to pathogens, only a few ion channels are known to participate in the plant response to infection. CNGC4 is a disease resistance-related cyclic nucleotide-gated ion channel. Arabidopsis thaliana CNGC4 mutants hlm1 and dnd2 display an impaired hypersensitive response (HR), retarded growth, a constitutively active salicylic acid (SA)-mediated pathogenesis-related response and elevated resistance against bacterial pathogens. Barley CNGC4 shares 67% aa identity with AtCNGC4. The barley mutant nec1 comprising of a frame-shift mutation of CNGC4 displays a necrotic phenotype and constitutively over-expresses PR-1, yet it is not known what effect the nec1 mutation has on barley resistance against different types of pathogens.