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Citation for Study 16147

Citation title: "Phylogenies reveal predictive power of traditional medicine in bioprospecting".

Study name: "Phylogenies reveal predictive power of traditional medicine in bioprospecting".

This study is part of submission 16147 (Status: Published).

Citation

Saslis-lagoudakis H., Savolainen V., Williamson E.M., Forest F., Wagstaff S., Baral S.R., Watson M.F., Pendry C.A., & Hawkins J.A. 2012. Phylogenies reveal predictive power of traditional medicine in bioprospecting. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 109: 15835-15840.

Authors

• Saslis-lagoudakis H. (submitter)
• Savolainen V.
• Williamson E.M.
• Forest F.
• Wagstaff S.
• Baral S.R.
• Watson M.F.
• Pendry C.A.
• Hawkins J.A. 00441183786546

Abstract

There is controversy about whether traditional medicine can guide drug discovery, and investment in bioprospecting informed by ethnobotanical data has fluctuated. One view is that traditionally used medicinal plants are not necessarily efficacious and there are no robust methods for distinguishing those which are most likely to be bioactive when selecting species for further testing. Here, we reconstruct a genus-level molecular phylogenetic tree representing the 20,000 species found in the floras of three disparate biodiversity hotspots: Nepal, New Zealand, and the Cape of South Africa. Borrowing phylogenetic methods from community ecology, we reveal significant clustering of the 1,500 traditionally used species, and provide a direct measure of the relatedness of the three medicinal floras. We demonstrate shared phylogenetic patterns across the floras: related plants from these regions are used to treat medical conditions in the same therapeutic areas. This finding strongly indicates independent discovery of plant efficacy, an interpretation corroborated by the presence of a significantly greater proportion of known bioactive species in these plant groups than in random samples. We conclude that phylogenetic cross-cultural comparisons can focus screening efforts on a subset of traditionally used plants that are richer in bioactive compounds, and could revitalize the use of traditional knowledge in bioprospecting.

Keywords

ethnobotany, ethnopharmacology, herbal medicine, phylogeny, systematics

External links

• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1202242109

About this resource

• Canonical resource URI: http://purl.org/phylo/treebase/phylows/study/TB2:S16147
• Other versions: Nexus NeXML
• Show BibTeX reference

  		@ARTICLE{TreeBASE2Ref23469,
  	 author = {Haris  Saslis-Lagoudakis and Vincent  Savolainen and Elizabeth M. Williamson and Felix  Forest and Steven J.  Wagstaff and Sushim R Baral and Mark F. Watson and Colin A. Pendry and Julie A Hawkins},
  	 title = {Phylogenies reveal predictive power of traditional medicine in bioprospecting},
  	 year = {2012},
  	 keywords = {ethnobotany, ethnopharmacology, herbal medicine, phylogeny, systematics},
  	 doi = {10.1073/pnas.1202242109},
  	 url = {http://},
  	 pmid = {},
  	 journal = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America},
  	 volume = {109},
  	 number = {},
  	 pages = {15835--15840},
  	 abstract = {There is controversy about whether traditional medicine can guide drug discovery, and investment in bioprospecting informed by ethnobotanical data has fluctuated. One view is that traditionally used medicinal plants are not necessarily efficacious and there are no robust methods for distinguishing those which are most likely to be bioactive when selecting species for further testing. Here, we reconstruct a genus-level molecular phylogenetic tree representing the 20,000 species found in the floras of three disparate biodiversity hotspots: Nepal, New Zealand, and the Cape of South Africa. Borrowing phylogenetic methods from community ecology, we reveal significant clustering of the 1,500 traditionally used species, and provide a direct measure of the relatedness of the three medicinal floras. We demonstrate shared phylogenetic patterns across the floras: related plants from these regions are used to treat medical conditions in the same therapeutic areas. This finding strongly indicates independent discovery of plant efficacy, an interpretation corroborated by the presence of a significantly greater proportion of known bioactive species in these plant groups than in random samples. We conclude that phylogenetic cross-cultural comparisons can focus screening efforts on a subset of traditionally used plants that are richer in bioactive compounds, and could revitalize the use of traditional knowledge in bioprospecting.}
  }
  		

• Show RIS reference

  		TY  - JOUR
  ID  - 23469
  AU  - Saslis-Lagoudakis,Haris 
  AU  - Savolainen,Vincent 
  AU  - Williamson,Elizabeth M.
  AU  - Forest,Felix 
  AU  - Wagstaff,Steven J. 
  AU  - Baral,Sushim R
  AU  - Watson,Mark F.
  AU  - Pendry,Colin A.
  AU  - Hawkins,Julie A
  T1  - Phylogenies reveal predictive power of traditional medicine in bioprospecting
  PY  - 2012
  KW  - ethnobotany
  KW  - ethnopharmacology
  KW  - herbal medicine
  KW  - phylogeny
  KW  - systematics
  UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1202242109
  N2  - There is controversy about whether traditional medicine can guide drug discovery, and investment in bioprospecting informed by ethnobotanical data has fluctuated. One view is that traditionally used medicinal plants are not necessarily efficacious and there are no robust methods for distinguishing those which are most likely to be bioactive when selecting species for further testing. Here, we reconstruct a genus-level molecular phylogenetic tree representing the 20,000 species found in the floras of three disparate biodiversity hotspots: Nepal, New Zealand, and the Cape of South Africa. Borrowing phylogenetic methods from community ecology, we reveal significant clustering of the 1,500 traditionally used species, and provide a direct measure of the relatedness of the three medicinal floras. We demonstrate shared phylogenetic patterns across the floras: related plants from these regions are used to treat medical conditions in the same therapeutic areas. This finding strongly indicates independent discovery of plant efficacy, an interpretation corroborated by the presence of a significantly greater proportion of known bioactive species in these plant groups than in random samples. We conclude that phylogenetic cross-cultural comparisons can focus screening efforts on a subset of traditionally used plants that are richer in bioactive compounds, and could revitalize the use of traditional knowledge in bioprospecting.
  L3  - 10.1073/pnas.1202242109
  JF  - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
  VL  - 109
  IS  - 
  SP  - 15835
  EP  - 15840
  ER  -