Botany and health: Very small chemical changes to dietary flavonoids cause very large effects on human immune system
Friday, August 30, 2013 - 15:30
in Biology & Nature
Very small chemical changes to dietary flavonoids cause very large effects when the plant natural products are tested for their impact on the human immune system. Plants are capable of making tens of thousands of different small molecules - an average leaf for example, produces around 20,000. Many of these are found in a typical diet and some are already known to have medicinal properties with effects on health, diseases and general well-being. Now plant biologists and immunologists have examined a very closely related family of these small molecules (flavonoids) to establish how tiny changes to their chemical structures affect their bio-activity.