Bioprospecting Biodiversity to Generate Bioresources

Abstract

Bioprospecting is the process of searching for species of plants and animals (biodiversity) which can serve as sources of medicinal compounds and other commercially important compounds (bioresources) [1]. Bioprospecting can be considered as a way to fund the conservation and preservation of biodiversity, especially in developing countries. However, bioprospecting takes up a very meagre amount of time, effort and funding from the pharmaceutical companies [2]. This is because the probability of any synthetic or natural chemical having any potential biological activity is very low. Considering that a group of compounds can have similar activity against a wide range of diseases and that chemical synthesis of compounds is much cheaper, pharmaceutical companies are not inclined to devote much of their budget to bioprospecting [3]. Also, the process of screening extracts for drug activity has a very low success rate [3]. For example, in one case, only 1% of 18,000 extracts screened showed positive anti-cancer activity. Despite these drawbacks, it has been suggested that, with progress in science, bioprospecting can be made more cost-effective in the future [4]. Organisms of all types, like bacteria [5], fungi [6], plants [7], invertebrates [8,9,10] and even vertebrates [11] have been used in bioprospecting. Systems biology and taxonomy play important roles in establishing bioprospecting strategies. With the increase in antibiotic resistance, bioprospecting to discover novel natural compounds and extracts is gathering importance in the field of drug discovery.