Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Biodiversity plays a vital role in maintaining human and animal health because numerous plants, animals, and fungi are used in medicine to produce vital vitamins, painkillers, antibiotics, and other medications. [1] [2] [3] Natural products have been recognized and used as medicines by ancient cultures all around the world. [4]
Pharmacognosy is the study of crude drugs obtained from medicinal plants, animals, fungi, and other natural sources. [1] The American Society of Pharmacognosy defines pharmacognosy as "the study of the physical, chemical, biochemical , and biological properties of drugs, drug substances, or potential drugs or drug substances of natural origin ...
21st century begins with the first complete sequences of individual human genomes by Human Genome Project, on 12 February 2001, this allowed a switch in drug development and research from the traditional way of drug discovery that was isolating molecules from plants or animals or create new molecules and see if they could be useful in treatment ...
Angiosperms (flowering plants) were the original source of most plant medicines. [9] Human settlements are often surrounded by weeds used as herbal medicines, such as nettle, dandelion and chickweed. [10] [11] Humans were not alone in using herbs: some animals, such as non-human primates, monarch butterflies and sheep ingest plants when they ...
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty; Biwer et al.Throughout the Andes, stretching skyward from dry tropical rainforests, is an inconspicuous tree that can turn your mind ...
Many synthetic and semisynthetic drugs are structural modifications of the alkaloids, which were designed to enhance or change the primary effect of the drug and reduce unwanted side-effects. [208] For example, naloxone , an opioid receptor antagonist , is a derivative of thebaine that is present in opium .
Extracts from Camptotheca (the "happy tree" or "cancer tree") were used to develop the chemotherapeutic drug Topotecan. Plant sources of anti-cancer agents are plants, the derivatives of which have been shown to be usable for the treatment or prevention of cancer in humans. [1] [2]
Bioprospecting (also known as biodiversity prospecting) is the exploration of natural sources for small molecules, macromolecules and biochemical and genetic information that could be developed into commercially valuable products for the agricultural, [2] [3] aquaculture, [4] [5] bioremediation, [4] [6] cosmetics, [7] [8] nanotechnology, [4] [9] or pharmaceutical [2] [10] industries.