An Overview of Genomics, Transcriptomics and Proteomics Approaches for Medicinal Plants Research

Medicinal plants have played an important part in the survival of the human species since time immemorial. The oldest manuscripts from ancient civilizations formed in China, India, Mesopotamia and Egypt mention plants that were used as antiseptics and antipyretics. The years-old data from ethnobotany provided a variety of plants with bioactivity against many diseases. With the advent of the Omics age, it was found that the underlying mechanism that governs the production of bioactive compounds has been hidden in the expression of genes that control the quantity of a particular enzyme expressed, which in turn affects the production of a particular or a group of secondary metabolites and how can we alter their expression using the omics approach. The chapters shed light on the three main omics concepts, genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics, and how they have been utilized for the study of medicinal plants.