Phytochemical and ethnobotanical discovery of endemic American plants

这项研究的目的是对传统使用的植物进行科学研究，以了解使它们具有活性的植物化学物质的性质。由于对土著医生的了解迅速消失，因此存在一些紧迫性。我们与中美洲的玛雅·库兰德罗斯和加拿大北部的克里/因纽特医生有长期的合作，我们将与他们合作，记录用于治疗感染和神经退行性疾病的药用植物，然后在相关的实验室测试中进行测试。我们特别感兴趣的是确定抗感染植物是否可以抑制细菌生物膜的形成，这是医药和工业中出现的一个问题，我们几乎没有解决方案。同样，我们将评估一些传统使用的植物是否有能力在标准化的实验室分析中防止神经退化。我们将提取我们先前在癫痫和焦虑分析中鉴定为有效的植物和其他植物，以分离和鉴定有效成分。一些更重要的植物属于重要的蓝莓-越橘属，或热带胡椒属，胡椒正在通过先进的化学仪器方法、核磁共振代谢组学和高效液相/质谱联用对植物化学物质进行彻底的研究。该项目将培训5名研究生，有助于我们对民族植物学的理解，并可能导致新的治疗方法和有用的天然保健品。

The purpose of this research is to study traditionally used plants scientifically in order to understand the nature of the phytochemical substances that makes them active. There is some urgency due to the rapidly disappearing knowledge of indigenous healers.We have a longstanding collaboration with Maya curanderos in Central America and Cree/Inuit healers in Northern Canada with whom we will work to document medicinal plant use for infections and neurodegenerative diseases, then test them in relevent lab assays. We are particularly interested in determining if antiinfective plants can inhibit bacterial biofilm formation, an emerging problem in medicine and industry for which we have few solutions. Similarly, we will assess if some traditionally used plants have the capacity to prevent neurodegerneration in standardized lab assays. The active plants and other plants that we previously identified as active in epilepsy and anxiety assays will be extracted for the purpose of isolation and identification of the active principles. Some of the more important plants that belong to the important blueberry-cranberry genus, Vaccinium, or the tropical pepper genus, Piper are being thoroughly investigated for phytochemical substances by advanced chemical instrumentation methods, NMR metabolomics and HPLC/MS/MS. The program will train 5 graduate students, contribute to our understanding of ethnobotany and potentially lead to new treatments and useful natural health products.