Challenges and opportunities in sourcing for plant secondary metabolite research in the 21st century

Challenges and Opportunities in Sourcing for Plant Secondary Metabolite Research in the 21st Century Plants have been the source of useful substances since times immemorial. There are an estimated 450.000 flowering plant species on this planet, thousands of which have been used for one purpose or the other in the past and we are currently seeing dramatic improvements in analytical technique: The possibilities of identifying and even predicting the bioactivities of secondary compounds are more sophisticated than ever before. Authentication of plant material has always been a major challenge in secondary metabolite studies, but molecular techniques now theoretically permit the authentication of any plant material as precisely as desired– as long as it contains DNA and requisite reference data are available. Building up these reference data-bases is thus a major current challenge. While there is thus dramatical progress on all technical fronts, legal access to plant material faces new challenges: The Nagoya Protocol seriously limits legal access to plant material for “molecular and biochemical studies”. On the other hand, new applications and technical possibilities render major innovations possible based on well-known useful plants. Additionally, major ex-situ collections potentially provide an invaluable source for secondary compound research - an estimated 50.000 plant species are held in the collections of German Botanical Gardens.

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Artikel online veröffentlicht:
13. Dezember 2021