Pecologix Political Ecology Blotter

This review is an updated and expanded version of the three prior reviews that were published in this journal in 1997, 2003, and 2007. In the case of all approved therapeutic agents, the time frame has been extended to cover the 30 years from January 1, 1981, to December 31, 2010, for all diseases worldwide, [...]

Historical sources suggest that in the 1800s, when smallpox still posed a serious threat, the Micmac native Americans of Nova Scotia treated the disease using a botanical infusion derived from the insectivorous plant Sarracenia purpurea, a species of pitcher plant.Now, Jeffrey Langland at Arizona State University in Tempe, US, and colleagues have conducted in vitro [...]

Water samples collected from the Northern region of India were used for isolation of anoxygenic photosynthetic (purple non-sulfur) bacterial isolate. The isolate was grown in modified Sistrom’s media at pH 7.0 and characterized as new strain of Rhodobacter sphaeroides NMBL-01 by 16S rDNA sequencing analysis and used for current study. Effect of pH on growth [...]

Artificial two-dimensional biological habitats were prepared from porous polymer layers and inoculated with the fungus Penicillium roqueforti to provide a living material. Such composites of classical industrial ingredients and living microorganisms can provide a novel form of functional or smart materials with capability for evolutionary adaptation. This allows realization of most complex responses to environmental [...]

Natural products continue to provide a diverse and unique source of bioactive lead compounds for drug discovery, but maintaining their continued eminence as source compounds is challenging in the face of the changing face of the pharmaceutical industry and the changing nature of biodiversity prospecting brought about by the Convention on Biological Diversity. This review [...]

From the data presented, the utility of natural products as sources of novel structures, but not necessarily the final drug entity, is still alive and well. Thus, in the area of cancer, over the time frame from around the 1940s to date, of the 155 small molecules, 73% are other than “S” (synthetic), with 47% [...]

Although natural products have been marginalized by major pharmaceutical companies over the last 20–30 years, the changing landscape of drug discovery now favors a greatly enhanced role for Nature’s privileged structures. Screening for drug leads in phenotypic screens provides the best opportunity to realize the value of natural products. Advances in total synthesis, especially function-oriented [...]