Linking Omics Approaches to Medicinal Plants and Human Health

Abstract

People have an intimate association with plants since the onset of civilizations on this planet for various purposes, such as food, shelter, dye and healing. The use of plants for medicinal purposes in ancient times involved trial-and-error methods for their bioactivities. The therapeutic potential of medicinal plants has been well acknowledged in recent times with increasing experimental proofs. This has led to increased interest in their use for nutraceutical as well as medicinal purposes. It is not surprising that many of the modern medicines used currently are derived from plants. For this reason, there is an increased interest in the bioprospecting, usage and drug formulations of medicinal plants because of the presence of specialized metabolites in them. This upsurge in the interest on the usage of medicinal plants is attributed to their easy availability, developments in the recent high-throughput omics approaches, increased disease burden and increased participation of pharmaceutical companies in the business of producing phytomedicinal products for delivering plant-based healthcare services. To date, the primary focus of research with regard to medicinal plants has been in the areas of phytochemistry, pharmacognosy and horticulture. However, recent breakthroughs in high-throughput approaches have revolutionized this area of research and shifted the focus towards omics approaches, such as genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, epigenomics, trichomics and ionomics. Thus, the present chapter discusses the high-throughput omics approaches in identifying genes, proteins and metabolites of medicinal plant species.