Abstract
It may be assumed that plants developed a wide variety of secondary metabolites during hundreds of millions of years of evolution as a means of defending themselves against herbivores, microorganisms, viruses, and other plants (see Chapter 11). Among the more than 50,000 natural products that are known today, over 12,000 are alkaloids.
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Wink, M. (1998). A Short History of Alkaloids. In: Roberts, M.F., Wink, M. (eds) Alkaloids. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-2905-4_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-2905-4_2
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