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Modern Molecular Biology Technologies and Higher Usability of Ancient Knowledge of Medicinal Plants for Treatment of Human Diseases

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Plant and Human Health, Volume 2

Abstract

Medicinal plants and plant products have been used by humans since the ancient times. Medicinal plants find wide usage in developed as well as in developing countries worldwide even till date, and yet there is not much crosstalk between the researchers of molecular medicine and/or diagnostics and practitioners and users of alternative medicines. In this chapter, we have tried to connect the dots and identify certain simple yet well-established molecular technologies that we believe should be employed in order to identify the function of the genes and the effect of the bioactive compound(s) in medicinal plant(s) to treat patients with various chronic diseases such as various cancers or enhance conventional treatment for better patient outcome.

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Abbreviations

AKR1C3 :

Aldo-keto reductase family 1 member C3

BH-FDR:

Benjamini and Hochberg False Discovery Rate

BLOSUM:

BLOcks SUbstitution Matrix

BONF:

Bonferroni correction

DASH:

Dynamic allele-specific hybridization

DNA:

Deoxyribonucleic acid

dNDPs:

Deoxynucleotide diphosphates

dNTPs:

Deoxynucleotide triphosphates

FASTA:

FAST-All

gDNA:

Genomic DNA

GeCKO:

Genome-scale CRISPR knock-out

GWAS:

Genome-wide association studies

HDR:

Homology-directed repair

HOXB8 :

Homeobox B8

HWE:

Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium

IBS:

Identical by state

LD:

Linkage disequilibrium

MAFFT:

Multiple alignment using fast Fourier transform

ME:

Minimum evolution

ML:

Maximum likelihood

MP:

Maximum parsimony

mRNA:

Messenger ribonucleic acid

NJ:

Neighbour joining

NHER:

Non-homologous end joining

PAM:

Point accepted mutations

PCa:

Prostate cancer

PSA:

Prostate-specific antigen

RFLP:

Restriction fragment length polymorphism

RNA:

Ribonucleic acid

RNAi:

RNA interference

sgRNA:

Single guide RNA

shRNA:

Short hairpin RNA

SNP:

Single nucleotide polymorphism

TALEN:

Transcription activator-like effector nuclease

UPGMA:

Unweighted pair group method with arithmetic means

ZFN:

Zinc finger nuclease

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Discipline of Nutrition and Dietetics, FM & HS, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Venkatesh Vaidyanathan, Chi Hsiu-Juei Kao, Alice Wang, Radha Pallati & Lynnette R. Ferguson

  2. Auckland Cancer Society Research Centre, Auckland, New Zealand

    Venkatesh Vaidyanathan, Chi Hsiu-Juei Kao, Alice Wang, Nishi Karunasinghe & Lynnette R. Ferguson

  3. School of Engineering, Computer and Mathematical Sciences, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand

    Vijay Naidu

  4. Department of Molecular Medicine and Pathology, FM & HS, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Anower Jabed, Khanh Tran & Prasanna Kallingappa

  5. Vernon Jenson Unit, FM & HS, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Prasanna Kallingappa

  6. Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

    Gareth Marlow

  7. Department of Genetic Medicine, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

    Shaik Noor Ahmad

Authors
  1. Venkatesh Vaidyanathan
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  2. Vijay Naidu
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  3. Anower Jabed
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  4. Khanh Tran
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  5. Prasanna Kallingappa
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  6. Chi Hsiu-Juei Kao
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  7. Alice Wang
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  8. Nishi Karunasinghe
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  9. Radha Pallati
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  10. Gareth Marlow
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  11. Shaik Noor Ahmad
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  12. Lynnette R. Ferguson
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Venkatesh Vaidyanathan .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Botany and Centre for Environmental Studies Ege University, Vice President of the Islamic World Academy of Sciences Amann, Jordan, Izmir, Izmir, Turkey

    Munir Ozturk

  2. Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

    Khalid Rehman Hakeem

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Vaidyanathan, V. et al. (2019). Modern Molecular Biology Technologies and Higher Usability of Ancient Knowledge of Medicinal Plants for Treatment of Human Diseases. In: Ozturk, M., Hakeem, K. (eds) Plant and Human Health, Volume 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03344-6_7

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