It is intriguing to think about how a potent bio active molecule isolated from marine organism (which must be alien to animal viruses) against HIV and thus involving in human healthcare. How could this organism biosynthesis a bio-active molecule with such elegance to act and interfere the viral replication? Why does this marine organism want to do favor to humans? What could be the connection among these three exist?
The organism not for favor to human, but them are unfortunate to be partrner in the common biosphere in the earth. And we also are generated from the same ancestor.
So we need and get the same or raltional organic substances from the natural.
All life forms are in competition with others for resources. Therefore all have various forms of defense, including inhibitors of processes that are essential to competitors, while causing little harm to the organism producing the toxin. Many metabolic processes are common to many life forms, due either to common ancestry or convergent evolution, giving a rationale for searching among very unrelated organisms for protection agains human pathogens. While marine organisms do not synthesize their toxins for the benefit of humans, there is no reason that humans cannot use these marine toxins for their own benefit.
Your assumption of causality is inherently incorrect. Secondary metabolites do not necessitate a function to be produced. Many natural products are formed out of inefficiency or because the inherent selectivity of the enzymatic processes are poor. The application of selection pressures to a chaotic system does not result in everything having a purpose.
In addition to this, structural information within the biosphere is limited, most functionality is carried out via proteins which are ubiquitous throughout all animals, in addition to this those proteins can only fold in a limited number of ways. By inspection it can be seen that structural motifs are highly conserved. Therefore any selection pressure that selects for a structural interaction will have a relatively high probability of cross reactivity with other proteins.
The search for natural products is not a rational search for purpose, it is a search for novelty.
Natural products have a long and impressive history as sources of medicine. Intent of natural regulations is based on a self-care model. There are two categories of natural products, crude and processed. But it is mandatory that Class 1 milk product” or “fluid milk product” means any product made from milk or cream that is prepared for sale in liquid or fluid form Similarly, most of the phytochemicals synthesized are light sensitive and water soluble and most of the secondary metabolites do not necessitate a function to be produced because most of them are water insoluble. Hence, for medicinal purposes one can change a basic function group like OH to any other group if he/she finds more therapeutic value.
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