what is the relationship between drug discovery and ecological biodiversity?
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The argument has been raised that we must preserve biodiversity because different plants/animals/fungus hold the key to making new drugs and making the drug companies richer.
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Try here:\n\nhttp://biomed.brown.edu/Courses/BI108/BI108_2004_Groups/Group04/Drug_Efficacy.htm
408132
The experimental fragmentation of landscapes of a natural ecosystem resulted in declines in the abundance and distribution of most species in the multispecies animal community inhabiting the landscapes and the extinction of many species. These declines caused the deterioration of the positive interspecific relation between local population abundance and distributional extent in this community. However, when patches were connected by habitat corridors, an immigration "rescue effect" arrested declines in both abundance and distribution and maintained the observed positive relation between them. These results demonstrate the importance of metapopulation dynamics and landscape connectivity for the persistence of populations in fragmented landscapes.
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biodiversity is how many different types of organisms live in a area. And -it helps because it is less likely for invasion of insects. how are you because my class just finished having a test on this
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It is the developing of technologies on the molecular scale in the field of biology. That's really the only way to describe it, I think. Why not look it up on wikipedia?
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The DNA molecule increases complexity by 'glomming' on extra molecules all the time. If the extra molecules either don't cause major defects, or as long as they don't interfere too much with living functions, then they cause the DNA design to drift away from the core features which fit the environment. In this way, nature always explores the infinite possibilities of life, while the local environment trims all the surviving possibilities down to the ones which fit within the resource base and predator effects. Genetic changes which still provide a net creative gain for the species will be kept.
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Species matters more than age.
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to balance the ecosystem
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ecosystem? biosphere? biological community?
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Each ecosystem has what is called a "carrying capacity" for the organisms. This is where birth rate = deaths.\n\nThis is because organism's grow in number until the demand or limit of one (or more) factors for life become exceeded.\n\nSome factors are things like water, living space, nutrient source (food) and waste build up.\n\nPopulations can exceed the carrying capacity for a short time but eventually the limit of the environment brings the population back down.
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This smells like schoolwork so I'll just leave a few leads. \nBiodiversity or biological diversity can be measured as:\n- species diversity\n- ecological diversity\n- genetic diversity\nEach has specific methodologies for conservation.\n\nConservation can be basically of two types: \n- in situ\n- ex situ.\n\nTry the web and also the book "Living in the environment" by G. Tyler Miller. It's probably available in your school library.
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You may think of Plants as biochemical Laboratories. All plants create chemical molecules, as the result of their primary or secondary metabolic procedures. These chemical molecules can be quite simple or have very complex structure. \nThe biological properties of these molecules was and still is a major part of scientific investigation. So one can not say that there is a specific group of plants from which we can expect medicinal products to be researched and developed. \nHowever there is a group of plants, which we call medicinal & aromatic plants because many of the species in this group has already been utilised for their biological active chemical products. \nThis group compromises mainly from species belonging to specific plant families (e.g. Lamiaceae). \nPharmaceutical companies and botanists nowadays search for new chemical molecules and test their biological properties. Drugs that are beeing produced based on a plant molecule are basically no different from any other drug available. So keep in mind that nature was always the first medicine provider and still is.
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The pharmaceutical companies or scientists.
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OH YEAH!  The abiotic things.  Community is the interaction of living species with each other, ecosystem is those interactions Plus interaction with abiotic factors (water, temperature etc).\nLet me make sure.\n\nYep Yep.  i think that's it
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http://dev.biologists.org/cgi/content/full/130/17/4123?ck=nck
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In a nutshell, the majority of ongoing research is devoted to identifying small molecule inhibitors (drugs/pharmaceuticals) which target crucial events in the HIV viral life cycle.  For example, one critical event in viral propogation involves a protein/RNA interaction that causes a switch from the early to the late phase of the viral life cycle.  Inhibition of this protein/RNA interaction totally stops the virus in it's tracks.  Thus identifying an agent/drug that can prevent this interaction would be key in finding a better treatment for those already infected with HIV. \n\nAnother venue of research centers around identification and production of a vaccine that will prevent infection in the first place.
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it's at least 99.99%... the 0.01% difference is what pharmacogenetics/genomics is trying to exploit... their are hap-maps and genetic diversity studies being generated by companies such as perlegen and affymetrix... check out their sites.\n\nthe single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) make genomic profiles unique, even among the unique profiles, there are clusters or groupings with similar patterns...