Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University Herbaria, 22 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
LVMH Research, 185 Avenue de Verdun, 45804 Saint Jean de Braye CEDEX, France.
Curr Biol. 2024 Feb 26;34(4):R158-R173. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.12.038.
Plants have been an essential source of human medicine for millennia. In this review, we argue that a holistic, interdisciplinary approach to the study of medicinal plants that combines methods and insights from three key disciplines - evolutionary ecology, molecular biology/biochemistry, and ethnopharmacology - is poised to facilitate new breakthroughs in science, including pharmacological discoveries and rapid advancements in human health and well-being. Such interdisciplinary research leverages data and methods spanning space, time, and species associated with medicinal plant species evolution, ecology, genomics, and metabolomic trait diversity, all of which build heavily on traditional Indigenous knowledge. Such an interdisciplinary approach contrasts sharply with most well-funded and successful medicinal plant research during the last half-century, which, despite notable advancements, has greatly oversimplified the dynamic relationships between plants and humans, kept hidden the larger human narratives about these relationships, and overlooked potentially important research and discoveries into life-saving medicines. We suggest that medicinal plants and people should be viewed as partners whose relationship involves a complicated and poorly explored set of (socio-)ecological interactions including not only domestication but also commensalisms and mutualisms. In short, medicinal plant species are not just chemical factories for extraction and exploitation. Rather, they may be symbiotic partners that have shaped modern societies, improved human health, and extended human lifespans.
千百年来，植物一直是人类医学的重要来源。在这篇综述中，我们认为，将进化生态学、分子生物学/生物化学和民族药理学这三个关键学科的方法和见解结合起来，对药用植物进行整体的、跨学科的研究，有望在科学上取得新的突破，包括药理学发现以及人类健康和福祉的快速进步。这种跨学科研究利用了与药用植物物种进化、生态学、基因组学和代谢组学特征多样性相关的空间、时间和物种的相关数据和方法，所有这些都大量依赖于传统的土著知识。这种跨学科方法与过去半个世纪中大多数资金充足且成功的药用植物研究形成鲜明对比，尽管取得了显著进展，但这种方法大大简化了植物与人类之间的动态关系，掩盖了关于这些关系的更大的人类叙事，并忽视了可能对救命药物的重要研究和发现。我们认为，药用植物和人类应该被视为合作伙伴，它们之间的关系涉及到一系列复杂而尚未深入研究的（社会）生态相互作用，不仅包括驯化，还包括共生和互利共生。简而言之，药用植物不仅仅是用于提取和开发的化学工厂。相反，它们可能是共生伙伴，塑造了现代社会，改善了人类健康，延长了人类寿命。
