Proteomes 2017, 5(4), 35; doi:10.3390/proteomes5040035
Proteomic Contributions to Medicinal Plant Research: From Plant Metabolism to Pharmacological Action
1
Faculty of Medicine, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba 305-8577, Japan
2
College of Biomedical Engineering & Instrument Science, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China
3
Faculty of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba 305-8572, Japan
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Received: 13 November 2017 / Revised: 3 December 2017 / Accepted: 5 December 2017 / Published: 7 December 2017
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from “International Proteomics Conference 2017—Proteomics in Biotechnology and Life Sciences”)
Abstract
Herbal medicine is a clinical practice of utilizing medicinal plant derivatives for therapeutic purposes. It has an enduring history worldwide and plays a significant role in the fight against various diseases. Herbal drug combinations often exhibit synergistic therapeutic action compared with single-constituent dosage, and can also enhance the cytotoxicity induced by chemotherapeutic drugs. To explore the mechanism underlying the pharmacological action of herbs, proteomic approaches have been applied to the physiology of medicinal plants and its effects on animals. This review article focuses on the existing proteomics-based medicinal plant research and discusses the following topics: (i) plant metabolic pathways that synthesize an array of bioactive compounds; (ii) pharmacological action of plants tested using in vivo and in vitro studies; and (iii) the application of proteomic approaches to indigenous plants with scarce sequence information. The accumulation of proteomic information in a biological or medicinal context may help in formulating the effective use of medicinal plants. View Full-TextKeywords:
proteomics; medicinal plants; metabolic pathway; pharmacological action; accessibility to sequence data; access and benefit-sharing
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Hashiguchi, A.; Tian, J.; Komatsu, S. Proteomic Contributions to Medicinal Plant Research: From Plant Metabolism to Pharmacological Action. Proteomes 2017, 5, 35.
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