Throughout history, humans have used plants as a source of medicinal compounds. Indeed, many of the drugs used in modern pharmacology have been developed using plant-based natural metabolites as ‘lead compounds’, and we still use many plant biomolecules directly as pharmaceutical agents. My lab is principally interested in discovering the enzyme-encoding genes that produce medicinally interesting and efficacious compounds.
We also ask the question: how did these genes evolve? Plants have evolved a remarkable biosynthetic capacity to produce over four hundred thousand natural products with various carbon skeletal backbones and specific stereochemistries. Many compound classes, for example the flavonoids, are produced by most plants and thus the genes that operate in their biosynthesis evolved very early in time. Other classes of compounds (for example, the monoterpene indole alkaloids) are restricted to certain plant families, and thus the biosynthetic genes that produce MIAs evolved as plant lineages diverged. Other molecule classes, for example the cannabinoids produced by Cannabis sativa, are only found in a single species and thus only evolved once.
We also ask the question: how did these genes evolve? Plants have evolved a remarkable biosynthetic capacity to produce over four hundred thousand natural products with various carbon skeletal backbones and specific stereochemistries. Many compound classes, for example the flavonoids, are produced by most plants and thus the genes that operate in their biosynthesis evolved very early in time. Other classes of compounds (for example, the monoterpene indole alkaloids) are restricted to certain plant families, and thus the biosynthetic genes that produce MIAs evolved as plant lineages diverged. Other molecule classes, for example the cannabinoids produced by Cannabis sativa, are only found in a single species and thus only evolved once.
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