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Many of these plants are used intentionally as psychoactive drugs, for medicinal, religious, and/or recreational purposes. Some have been used ritually as entheogens for millennia. [1] [2] The plants are listed according to the specific psychoactive chemical substances they contain; many contain multiple known psychoactive compounds.
Calcitriol is a hormone and the active form of vitamin D, normally made in the kidney. [8] [9] [10] It is also known as 1,25-dihydroxycholecalciferol.It binds to and activates the vitamin D receptor in the nucleus of the cell, which then increases the expression of many genes. [11]
Over a hundred of the 224 drugs mentioned in the Huangdi Neijing – an early Chinese medical text – are herbs. [11] Herbs also commonly featured in the medicine of ancient India, where the principal treatment for diseases was diet. [12] A sample of raw opium. Opioids are among the world's oldest known drugs.
Hyoscyamine can be extracted from plants of the family Solanaceae, notably Datura stramonium. As hyoscyamine is a direct precursor in the plant biosynthesis of hyoscine, it is produced via the same metabolic pathway. [18] The biosynthesis of hyoscine begins with the decarboxylation of L-ornithine to putrescine by ornithine decarboxylase (EC 4.1 ...
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 .
Paraherbalism is the pseudoscientific use of extracts of plant or animal origin as supposed medicines or health-promoting agents. [1] [7] [8] Phytotherapy differs from plant-derived medicines in standard pharmacology because it does not isolate and standardize the compounds from a given plant believed to be biologically active. It relies on the ...
Colchicine is used in plant breeding by inducing polyploidy in plant cells to produce new or improved varieties, strains, and cultivars. [20] When used to induce polyploidy in plants, colchicine cream is usually applied to a growth point of the plant, such as an apical tip, shoot, or sucker.
The Madagascan periwinkle Catharanthus roseus L. is the source for a number of important natural products, [1] including catharanthine and vindoline [2] and the vinca alkaloids it produces from them: leurosine and the chemotherapy agents vinblastine [3] and vincristine, [4] all of which can be obtained from the plant.