Where Do Our Drugs Come From?
The incredible chemical weapon-making abilities of fungi, bacteria, and plants have created a diverse array of compounds that are useful to humans. Thanks to the University of Minnesota for...
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Hi, this is Kate from MinuteEarth. For every 10 medications used by humans, 7 contain chemical compounds that originally came from the natural world, mostly from bacteria, fungi, and plants. That’s because these unassuming organisms are masters of chemical warfare. Unlike more mobile creatures, which can flee when they’re threatened, plants, fungi, and bacteria are more or less stuck, so they’ve evolved machinery that makes specialized chemical weapons as defense against threats - both from predators and from each other. The battle plays out everywhere - on the tops of mountains, bottoms of oceans, and even under our feet. There, soil bacteria looking to deter hungry worms produce compounds that interfere with invertebrates’ nerve impulses. Other d...
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Hi, this is Kate from MinuteEarth. For every 10 medications used by humans, 7 contain chemical compounds that originally came from the natural world, mostly from bacteria, fungi, and plants. That’s because these unassuming organisms are masters of chemical warfare. Unlike more mobile creatures, which can flee when they’re threatened, plants, fungi, and bacteria are more or less stuck, so they’ve evolved machinery that makes specialized chemical weapons as defense against threats - both from predators and from each other. The battle plays out everywhere - on the tops of mountains, bottoms of oceans, and even under our feet. There, soil bacteria looking to deter hungry worms produce compounds that interfere with invertebrates’ nerve impulses. Other d...
