Bioprospecting

Buenz EJ, Johnson HE, Beekman EM, Motley TJ, Bauer BA. Bioprospecting Rumphius s Ambonese Herbal Volume I. / Ethnopharmacol 2005 96 57-70. 

Buenz EJ, Schnepple DJ, Bauer BA, Elkin PL, Riddle JM, Motley TJ. Techniques Bioprospecting historical herbal texts by hunting for new leads in old tomes. Trends Pharmacol Sci 2004 25 494-8. 

Collection of natural products, or bioprospecting, used to be relatively straightforward, with little formality or encumbrances. Now, however, there are new rules (Exhibit 3.2) to protect the natural habitats. 

As described in Exhibit 3.2, there are now regulations enacted to protect the environment with respect to natural product collection. Bioprospecting from natural habitats has to take into account the 1993 Convention on Biologi-... 

Hitherto, the normal source of collections has been from terrestrial habitats. However, marine bioprospecting represents a vast untapped area that is likely to be intensified. Exhibit 11.1 describes the diversity and hfe forms in this habitat. 

Patwardhan B. (2000) Ayurdeva The Designer medicine A review of ethnopharmacology and bioprospecting research. Indian Drugs 37 213-227. 

Soejarto DD, Fong HHS, Tan GT, et ai, Ethnobotany/ethnopharmacology and mass bioprospecting Issues on intellectual property and benefit-sharing, JEthnopharmacol 100 15-22, 2005. 

Artuso, A. Bioprospecting, Benefit Sharing, and Biotechnological Capacity Building. World Development 30 no. 8 (2002) 1355-1368. 

Fenwick, S. Bioprospecting or Biopiracy Drug Discovery Today 3 no. 9 (1998) 399-402. 

Joshi, L. and Lopez, L. (2005). Bioprospecting in plants for engineered proteins. Curr. Opin. Biol. 8 223-226. 

Bioprospecting—new term for an old approach that attracts new advocates... 

Rausser and Small overlooked several factors in their economic analysis of bioprospecting and hence overestimated its potential. Four of those factors are crucial and evidence for the importance of those factors was available by looking at the experiences of the big pharmaceutical companies. 

Balick MJ, Mendelsohn R. (1992). Assessing the economic value of traditional medicines from tropical rain forests. Conservation Biology, 6, 128-130. See also Svastad H, Dhillion SS. (2000). Responding to bioprospecting—from biodiversity in the south to medicines in the north. 

Rausser GC, Small AA. (2000). Valuing research leads bioprospecting and the conservation of genetic lesouices. Journal of Political Economy, 108,173-206. 

Firn RD. (2003). Bioprospecting—why is it so unrewarding Biodiversity and Conservation, 12, 207-16. See also Macilwain C. (1998). When rhetoric hits reality in debate on bioprospecting. Nature, 392,535-40. 

While the ICBG project has as one of its primary objectives the conservation of biodiversity, it is important to ensure that the bioprospecting activities themselves do not threaten the environment. Thus, only flowering plants which were known not to be endangered were collected, and plant collectors only collected plants of which there were a sufficient number present. 

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