Plant Science: Antibodies, Antigens and Antibiotics

• Antimicrobials
• Traditional Medicine
• Infectious Disease
• Nature Pharmacopoeia
• Phytopathogens

Plant science is a discipline of ‘Botany’ which is a Greek word βοτ?νη (botan?) meaning pasture or fodder. It involves the observation of plant growth, characteristics and investigates the relationship between plants and their environment.

Plants do not have antibody production, so they can’t recognize the foreign threats. Plants get many diseases which are caused by bacteria, fungi and virus. But not all plants die from the constant exposure to these diseases or microorganisms, so researchers says there must have some kind of immune system in plants.

Antigenic peptides present in the palatable parts of the plants can lead to the production of edible active vaccine. There are two major strategies one is to express antigens in transgenic plants and the other one is to produce antigenic peptides on the surface of plant viruses that could be used to infect host plants.

Antibiotics are in four major group antimicrobial compounds made by plants: phenolics and polyphenols, lectins and polypeptides, terpinoids and essential oils, and alkaloids. These compounds act on bacteria by inactivate proteins, adhesins and enzymes. The complex mixture of these groups shows combined action which has enhanced effect.