Medicinal Plants: Chemistry, Biology and Omics

Medicinal Plants: Chemistry, Biology and Omics reviews the phytochemistry, chemotaxonomy, molecular biology, and phylogeny of selected medicinal plant tribes and genera, and their relevance to drug efficacy. Medicinal plants provide a myriad of pharmaceutically active components, which have been commonly used in traditional Chinese medicine and worldwide for thousands of years. Increasing interest in plant-based medicinal resources has led to additional discoveries of many novel compounds, in various angiosperm and gymnosperm species, and investigations on their chemotaxonomy, molecular phylogeny and pharmacology. Chapters in this book explore the interrelationship within traditional Chinese medicinal plant groups and between Chinese species and species outside of China. Chapters also discuss the incongruence between chemotaxonomy and molecular phylogeny, concluding with chapters on systems biology and “-omics” technologies (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics), and how they will play an increasingly important role in future pharmaceutical research.