A Serendipitous Discovery
During a Red Cross relief mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo during the 1960s, a Norwegian doctor, Lorents Gran, noted that during labor African women used a medicinal tea made from the leaves of the plant Oldenlandia affinis (Figure 3) to induce labor and facilitate childbirth. The active ingredient was later determined to be a peptide, named kalata B1, after the traditional name for the native medicine, kalata-kalata. Although in vivo studies in rats confirmed the uterotonic activity of the purified peptide, it was another 20 years before the cyclic cystine knot motif and structure of the purified peptide were elucidated.
Read more about this topic: Cyclotides
Famous quotes containing the word discovery:
“He is not a true man of science who does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect to learn something by behavior as well as by application. It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, or of partial and extraneous laws. The study of geometry is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no larger system than the starry one.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)