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Functional versus chemical diversity: is biodiversity important for drug discovery?

Functional versus chemical diversity: is biodiversity important for drug discovery?

Authors :
Tulp, Martin
Bohlin, Lars
Source :
Trends in Pharmacological Sciences. May2002, Vol. 23 Issue 5, p225. 7p.
Publication Year :
2002

Abstract

Prospecting the full biodiversity of nature to find leads for new drugs is not necessary. Because finding leads is aimed at identifying biological activity, structure is of secondary importance. Furthermore, although natural chemical diversity might be unrivalled, functional diversity is bound to be considerably less. It is likely that many millions of chemically distinct molecules exist in nature but it is inconceivable that the number of different biological functions is near this number. This is corroborated by knowledge obtained from the genome sequences of an increasing number of species. It is unlikely that ligands for specific molecular targets are restricted to one species and even individual compounds are often found in more than one species. Important molecular mechanisms are likely to be ubiquitous and there are no a priori reasons to assume that some are restricted to, for example, tropical rainforests. Thus, there are no obvious advantages of ‘biodiversity prospecting’, which will, possibly, endanger fragile ecosystems in the search for rare species. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Subjects

Subjects :
*BIODIVERSITY
*DRUGS

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
01656147
Volume :
23
Issue :
5
Database :
Academic Search Index
Journal :
Trends in Pharmacological Sciences
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
7799686
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0165-6147(02)02007-2