Ranunculales Medicinal Plants (eBook)

Ranunculales is an order of flowering plants belonging to a paraphyletic group known as the basal eudicots. Medicinal plants of this order provide myriad pharmaceutically active components commonly used worldwide in ethnomedicine and traditional Chinese medicine. Interest in plant-based medicinal resources has led to discoveries of many novel compounds in various species, and to investigations on their chemodiversity, biodiversity and pharmacotherapy. Ranunculales Medicinal Plants covers this order of flowering plants comprehensively in this context; detailing the phytochemistry, chemotaxonomy, molecular biology, and phylogeny of selected medicinal plants families and genera, and their relevance to drug efficacy. The book carries out an exhaustive survey of the literature in order to characterize global trends in the application of flexible technologies. The interrelationship between Chinese species and between Chinese and non-Chinese species is inferred, in the text, through molecular phylogeny, based on nuclear and chloroplast DNA sequencing. The title discusses the conflict between chemotaxonomy and molecular phylogeny, in the context of drug discovery and development. It offers invaluable and holistic coverage for the study of Ranunculales as a pharmaceutical resource.

• Describes current perceptions of biodiversity and chemodiversity of Ranunculales medicinal plants
• Explains how the conceptual framework of plant pharmacophylogeny benefits the sustainable exploitation of Ranunculales pharmaceutical resources
• Details how Ranunculales medicinal plants work from the chemical level upward
• Covers how the polypharmacology of Ranunculales compounds might inspire new chemical entity design and development for improved treatment outcome

Da-Cheng Hao is Associate Professor and Primary Investigator at the School of Environment and Chemical Engineering and the Biotechnology Institute, at Dalian Jiaotong University, in Dailan, China. He is a Guest Professor at the Institute of Medicinal Plant Development at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, and has published widely in leading journals in the field. Dr Hao is the author of Medicinal Plants, published by Woodhead Publishing in 2015.

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Ranunculales Medicinal Plants: Biodiversity, Chemodiversity and Pharmacotherapy comprehensively covers this order of flowering plants, detailing the phytochemistry, chemotaxonomy, molecular biology, and phylogeny of selected medicinal plants families and genera and their relevance to drug efficacy. The book carries out an exhaustive survey of the literature in order to characterize global trends in the application of flexible technologies. The interrelationship between Chinese species, and between Chinese and non-Chinese species, is inferred through molecular phylogeny and based on nuclear and chloroplast DNA sequencing. The book discusses the conflict between chemotaxonomy and molecular phylogeny in the context of drug discovery and development. Users will find invaluable and holistic coverage on the study of Ranunculales that will make this the go-to pharmaceutical resource. Describes current perceptions of biodiversity and chemodiversity of Ranunculales Explains how the conceptual framework of plant pharmacophylogeny benefits the sustainable exploitation of Ranunculales Details how Ranunculales medicinal plants work from the chemical level upward Covers how the polypharmacology of Ranunculales compounds might inspire new chemical entity design and development for improved treatment outcomes