Chemical Warfare

Abstract

In comparison to invertebrates, microbes, and, most important, plants, humans are amateurs when it comes to chemical production and chemical warfare. While we refer to the first chemical revolution as a period beginning in the eighteenth century, a time when chemistry was demystified and humans began producing and creating synthetic and organic chemicals, we are hundreds of millions of years behind nature’s chemical revolution. This revolution was driven in large part by plants.

Life could get along without animals and without fungi. But abolish the plants, and life would rapidly cease.

Richard Dawkins

P450 substrates in the past 1,200 million years then included sterols … endogenous metabolites, environmental chemicals, and plant metabolites. Since drugs are usually plant metabolites or derived from plant metabolites, the evolution of different P450 enzymes becomes central to the field of pharmacogenetics.

Daniel Nebert and Mathew Dieter

But the most famous plant antidote is that of Mithridates, which that king is said to have taken daily and by it to have rendered his body safe against danger from poison.

Aulus Cornelius Celsus