“Phylogenetic investigation of these traditional plants along with their medicinal uses and psychoactive effects may shed light on which plant families are used similarly regardless of geographic origin, and may reveal patterns of cultural convergence.”
Biography
Growing up in tropical Philippines, Jeanmaire “Jean” Molina has always been awed and inspired by its rich biodiversity. At 10, she was collecting bugs and flowers in her Barbie doll drawers. With dreams of becoming a NatGeo field biologist, she studied biology at the University of the Philippines. After college, she worked for Conservation International-Philippines identifying trees in the remote forests of Palanan, Philippines. To Jean, there is nothing more exhilarating than being mesmerized by the teeming diversity of life amidst relentless competition and trying to understand the biology behind it. In 2003, after encouragement from her botany mentor, Leonard Co, Jean left for the US to pursue graduate studies at Rutgers University (New Jersey), where she worked and published on the systematics of the grape relative Leea for her PhD dissertation. In 2009 she started her postdoctoral training at New York University, eventually cowriting a paper on the first molecular evidence for the single evolutionary origin of Asian rice. Two years after, she joined the biology faculty of Long Island University (Brooklyn, New York), where she and coauthors reported on the unprecedented loss of the chloroplast genome in the parasitic plant, Rafflesia, prompting the provocative title “When is a plant no longer a plant?” on a science news magazine. With diverse research interests in plant systematics, community ecology, Rafflesia biology, and herbal medicine, Jean has been a research mentor to many female graduate students, and sees it is as her duty to be a role model to them, who may be daunted by the notion that family and passion in science are immiscible. She has developed and taught courses in ethnobotany and medicinal botany to encourage students to develop a renewed appreciation for plants for their vital and inextricable, yet often overlooked roles in human lives. Outside the classroom, Jean enjoys traveling and being a mother to her 5-year-old son, Derris, named after a poisonous plant, and who comes after his mother, already able to identify plants in their backyard.
Phylogenetic analysis of traditional medicinal plants: discovering new drug sources from patterns of cultural convergence.
“…we find that certain plant families have a disproportionate number of medicinally useful and psychoactive species, with familial members repeatedly used for similar applications by different cultures from disparate parts of the world.”
Transcript abstract
Medicinal and psychoactive plants have long been used by different cultures worldwide, inspiring the development of modern pharmaceutical drugs including aspirin, digoxin, ephedrine, and morphine. Phylogenetic investigation of these traditional plants along with their medicinal uses and psychoactive effects may shed light on which plant families are used similarly regardless of geographic origin, and may reveal patterns of cultural convergence. Information is assigned to the node, instead of one species at a time, facilitating the study of trait distributions. The confluence of various immigrant groups in New York City (NYC) make it accessible to survey and phylogenetically analyze medicinally important plants in Latin, African, Ayurvedic, Middle Eastern and Chinese cultures and their uses. In a separate study, traditional psychoactive plants and their effects were also phylogenetically analyzed. In both cases, we find that certain plant families have a disproportionate number of medicinally useful and psychoactive species, with familial members repeatedly used for similar applications by different cultures from disparate parts of the world. Apiaceae, Burseraceae, Fabaceae, and Lamiaceae collectively show applications for gastrointestinal, cardiovascular, respiratory, musculoskeletal, and gynecological conditions among diverse immigrant cultures in NYC. Pharmacological traits related to hallucinogenic and sedative potential are also phylogenetically conserved within families such as Cactaceae and Papaveraceae, respectively, while unrelated families that exert similar psychoactive effects also affect similar neurotransmitter systems (i.e., mechanistic convergence), such as modulation of noradrenaline by unrelated stimulant species of Malvaceae and Rubiaceae. These patterns of cultural and mechanistic convergence among traditionally important medicinal and psychoactive plants suggest diverse cultures have independently discovered inherent bioactivity in these plant families and should be further explored in searching for new drug sources. These studies also demonstrate the predictive potential of phylogenetic analyses in uncovering new medicinal applications.
