Chemical Diversity, Biological Activity, and Genetic Aspects of Three Ocotea Species from the Amazon

species present economic importance and biological activities attributed to their essential oils (EOs) and extracts. For this reason, various strategies have been developed for their conservation. The chemical compositions of the essential oils and DNA sequences of , , and were subjected to comparison with data from , , and , previously reported. The multivariate analysis of chemical composition classified the EOs into two main clusters. Group I was characterized by the presence of α-pinene (9.8-22.5%) and β-pinene (9.7-21.3%) and it includes , , and . In group II, the oils of and showed high similarity due amounts of β-caryophyllene (22.2% and 18.9%, respectively). The EO of . , rich in -cymene (19.8%), showed minor similarity among all samples. The oils displayed promising antimicrobial and cytotoxic activities against (minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) < 19.5 µg·mL ) and MCF-7 cells (median inhibitory concentration (IC ) ≅ 65.0 µg·mL ), respectively. The analysis of gene displayed a good correlation with the main class of chemical compounds present in the EOs. However, the gene data did not show correlation with specific compounds.