A previous study has shown that a type of squill growing in Madeira produces a chemical compound that may be useful as a medicinal drug.
A previous study has shown that a type of squill growing in Madeira produces a chemical compound that may be useful as a medicinal drug. But a new study from researchers at Uppsala University has shown that this is probably not true: instead, the plant had likely accumulated antibiotics from contaminated soil.
All chemical compounds in nature are built through biosynthesis, a process where plants, animals and microorganisms produce complex compounds from simpler structures. Some of these are produced with the goal of protecting the organism, e.g. the toxic compounds produced by plants to poison herbivores. The fields of pharmacognosy and natural products chemistry are focussed on taking these compounds from nature and repurposing them for use in human medicine.
Today, we know quite a lot about biosynthesis within different organisms. Using this knowledge, we can even predict the kinds of chemical compounds that we expect to find within nature – and the ones we do not.
Read more at Uppsala University
Image by Ian Lindsay from Pixabay
