I'm reading the study now. Sorry I did not see this sooner.
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I'm reading a different study someone posted.
http://www.iupac.org/publications/pac/2 ... 7x1199.pdf
The strongest estrogenic compound comes from a different licorice species. But 6th on the list is a compound from Glabra. I don't see any from Inflata. Strange. I just hope these extracts we are getting are not just water soluble extracts, since the phenols might not be water soluble. They do have hydroxyl groups on them though, so they should be more soluble that steroids.
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I just read further. These are soluble. And they also act like emulsifiers.
Isoprenoid-substituted phenols of G. inflata
G. inflata is the main species in Xinjiang licorice on Japanese market. In our morphological study of
the licorice, it consisted of G. inflata (51 %), G. eurycarpa (8 %), G. uralensis (3 %), and some unidentified
licorice (38 %). About 40 kinds of flavonoids have been isolated from G. inflata. Among them,
20 are isoprenoid-substituted flavonoids. The main isoprenoid-substituted flavonoid is licochalcone A
(16). For this type of chalcone (e.g., 16, 17, etc., Fig. 3), the name “reversely constructed chalcone†or
“retrochalcone†is frequently used*. The 5-position of most flavonoids of the plant, 2?- and 6?-positions
of chalcones, is unsubstituted. Eight isoprenoid-substituted dibenzoylmethanes, i.e., glyinflanin A
(18)–F, glycyrdione B, and 5?-prenyllicodione, were also isolated from the root of the plant as minor
compounds. The 1H- and 13C-NMR spectra of these compounds are observed as an equilibrium mixture
of tautomeric dibenzoylmethanes and ?-hydroxychalcones in the solution (18a and 18b, Fig. 3). In
the solid state, these compounds may exist in the dibenzoylmethane form, because the ratio of two tautomers
depends upon concentration of solution. Dibenzoylmethanes are well known in flavonoids
chemistry as intermediates in flavone syntheses or in the isomerization “Wessely–Moser rearrangementâ€**.
Glyinflanin A (18) was converted to 4?,7-dihydroxy-3?,6-diprenylflavone (prenyllicoflavone
A) by heating in dry benzene.
Isoprenoid-substituted phenols of G. glabra
Three varieties of the species have been reported; Spanish licorice and Italian licorice are assigned to
G. glabra var. typica, Russian licorice is G. glabra var. glandulifera, and Persian and Turkish licorices
are G. glabra var. violacea. About 90 kinds of phenolic compounds have been isolated from the plants.
About 50 of them are substituted with isoprenoid group(s), e.g., 3-methyl-2-butenyl (prenyl) group,
2,2-dimethylpyran ring, etc. These G. glabra could be classified into two groups with the constituents
of isoprenoid-substituted flavonoids. Type I licorice is Spanish and Russian licorices. The main isoprenoid-
substituted flavonoid of the plants is a pyranoisoflavan, glabridin (1). The 5-position of most
flavonoids from the type I plants is unsubstituted, e.g., 1, glabrene (2), glabrol (3), 3-hydroxyglabrol
(4), etc. (Fig. 1). Type II licorice is Chinese and Kyrghiz G. glabra. From these plants, both 5-unsubstituted
flavonoids (e.g., 2) and 5-oxygenated flavonoids (e.g., 3?,8-diprenylated dalbergioidin, 5), have
been isolated. Nevertheless, most flavonoids from these plants are 5-hydroxy- or 5-methoxy-flavonoids.
The main isoprenoid-substituted flavonoid of the Kirghiz licorice is compound 5, but the isoflavan (1)
has not been isolated [4].
