Exploring Medicinal Plant Legacy for Drug Discovery in Post-genomic Era

Plants are a valuable source of pharmacologically important compounds since these are traditionally important in medicinal systems. Medicinal plant-based ancient wisdom could serve as a powerful tool to facilitate focused research on natural compounds for the drug discovery process. Medicinal plants are more important sources for drug discovery, specifically lead molecules as these offer several advantages over the synthetic molecules. Since in post genomic era, molecular targets for most diseases are known, conventional bioscreening strategies for medicinal plants are not sufficient to fulfill the present demand. It makes the role of medicinal plants more significant than ever before. The rich heritage of Indian medicinal plants can be explored utilizing various computational approaches for bioprospecting in the post-genomic era. In this review, the authors explore how Indian medicinal plant legacy can be utilized in post-genomic era utilizing the computational, bioinformatics, chemo-informatics, genomics and systems biology approaches. This approach shall make possible the systematic analysis integrating traditional and modern data in order to validate medicinal plant based knowledge. © 2018, The National Academy of Sciences, India.