Hold on to your memories: how recent findings will impact plant-based drug discovery

It is accepted that genetic traits favoring the survival and reproduction of individual organisms are more successful and more likely to be passed on, and that this process of natural selection underlies the broader adaptations of species. However, the demonstration that an individual plant is able to impart 'untested' transgenerational changes to its offspring challenges this paradigm, and indicates an injection point for novelty into the overall adaptation process of plants. Understanding the basis of these newly discovered variations in metabolite expression will have broad implications for the field of ethnobotany. This discipline is predicated on knowledge garnered from generations of trial and error experimentation to identify medicinal properties in plants. Thus, the discovery of novel pathways to alter metabolite profiles in plant progeny also alter a fundamental assumption of the discipline: that plants with medicinal properties a thousand years ago will still have medicinal properties today.