They’re not just plant poisons — they’re potential medicines, like the salicylic acid from willow bark becoming aspirin. In my pharmacology lab, we isolate these compounds precisely because they evolved to disrupt herbivores or microbes by targeting specific enzymes or receptors. My own focus is on mangroves from our estuaries; their bitter tannins defend against rot, but we’re tweaking them to fight bacterial biofilms instead.
What makes me say it is biking past those very mangroves at dawn, hearing the kingfishers and thinking how my auntie’s stubborn infection might just be solved by the same trees that weathered last monsoon’s storms. Susegad, but clever.
#work#career
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