Active ingredients plant design

Most drugs have been discovered by identifying and characterizing the active ingredient from traditional resources (plants, minerals, etc.) or by drug design. 

In order for a pesticide to be effective it has to come into contact with the organism it was designed to control, be taken up from the surface of the organism and transported or diffused to the location in the organism where it will be effective, and move to and bind to the molecular site of action [865]. The formulation influences impact and retention or spreading of the droplets, the residence time of the deposit, and the availability of the active ingredient to move into the plant. External factors such as temperature, humidity, wind, sunlight and rainfall also play roles in the efficacy of the product [865]. 

Since the evolution of pharmaceutical research [1,2], the stages of drug discovery and development have followed three predominant patterns (i) the systematic and methodical approach by chemists to rationally design and synthesize a molecule to target a specific molecular system (e.g., ion channels, receptors, enzymes, DNA) (ii) the isolation and purification of the active ingredients of medicinal plants or microorganisms to screen their spectrum of... 

The fact that nature has chosen to use a cyclopropane skeleton to design a defense mechanism for certain pyrethrum flowers against insect attack has been known since 1924, when Staudinger and Ruzicka isolated and characterised (-t-)-Jrans-chrysanthemic acid 1 from the petals of these plants [1]. The active insecticidal ingredients in these plants are in fact esters of 1, which can be easily modified and which have been commercially exploited to give birth to one of the most successful classes of biomimetic insecticides, the pyrethroids. In 1997, the market value of this class of insecticides amounted to a staggering 1.5 billion US [2],... 

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