• Question: Have we humans ever learnt anything really important from plants, E.G have we ever cured diseases from them?

    Asked by to Izzy, Amelia on 20 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 20 Mar 2014:

      We humans have learnt lots of important things from plants, not least how to live alongside them, but to use them to help us live in the comfort we do today.

      to use your example, humans have been using plants for centuries to cure (or even use moss as a bandage) , prevent disease (by eating lots of fruit and veg) or at least relieve the symptoms of diseases (anti-microbial properties).

      Medicine as we know it today is a relatively recent thing, and have largely taken over in terms of health care, but before that plants used to be all we had!

      There is still much to learn about plants, and I am proud to be part of the search!

      many other fields of science such as genetics, started with experiements concerning plants. Look up a guy called Gregor Mendel 🙂

    • Photo: Isabel Webb

      Isabel Webb answered on 20 Mar 2014:

      Plants are a great starting place for a lot of research into multi-celled living things. Animals are difficult to experiment on, and you can’t have identical cloned animals, whereas you can with plants.

      A classic example of this is Gregor Mendel. Mendel was a monk in Austria hundreds of years ago. He grew sweet pea plants in the garden, and noticed that if you bred a red flower with a white, the offspring were three red and one white. Investigating this further with other featured of peas, he discovered the patterns that led to the discovery of genetics, and eventually DNA. Understanding DNA has made enormous breakthroughs in a lot of science research – and this includes understanding diseases we might inherit from our parents, as well as understanding how viruses infect our cells! Once we understand this, we can try and develop ways to treat them – like vaccines.

      Many plants also make important chemicals that can be used to treat disease. These include antibiotics, but also chemicals like those used to treat cancer or prevent heart disease. A plant called Madagascan Periwinkle makes a chemical that can increase your chance of survival from 10% to 95% with some kinds of cancer!

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