Bioinformatics strategies associated with important ethnic medicinal plants

Abstract

Plants have been used as a source of medicine since historic times, and herbal drugs play an important role in the treatment of various ailments. Several commercially important modern medicines are of plant-based origin. One of the main purposes to investigate medicinal plants is to understand the main extracts from plants like alkaloids, flavonoids, etc., which can be used as therapeutics for human diseases. Bioinformatics play a crucial role in the analysis and interpretation of high-throughput data generated using molecular biology-based techniques. Bioinformatics approaches leverage plant-based knowledge discovery by offering new tools for the identification of genes and pathways involved in the production of secondary metabolites and also help to identify therapeutically important active compounds. Here we review bioinformatics strategies associated with important ethnic medicinal plants.