Plant Herbivore Defense

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Plant Herbivore Defense

Name: Ralph
Status: student
Grade: N/A
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: N/A

Question:

How are plants able to defend themselves against herbivores using chemicals? Are any of these chemicals useful for producing medicines?

Replies:

The following should be helpful:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_defense_against_herbivory

http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/Entomology/courses/en570/papers_1996/kimball.html

http://www.ice.mpg.de/bol/research/plants/plantshome.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbalism

Anthony Brach Ph.D.

Plants make a myriad of compounds that deter potential herbivores from eating them. These compounds can make the plant distasteful or be downright toxic to the herbivore. Often, the compounds are stable and nontoxic when the plant is intact. The compounds are converted to a more toxic or deterrent form when the herbivore begins to eat the plant. The fruits and vegetables we eat are often poor examples of the toxicity that plants normally have because we breed the plants to have reduced levels of toxins in the parts of the plant we want to eat.

Many of these compounds have broad effects on herbivores of all sizes (from nematodes to deer) and even microbial pathogens. Plants are the source of many chemicals that we consider medicines.

Jim Tokuhisa, Ph.D.

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