Mini Review

Integrating the Science of Pharmacology and Bio Informatics Phyllanthus "The wonder plant"
Rakhee. R.Nair, Regin Susan Abraham
Family: Euphorbiaceae Genus: Phyllanthus Synonyms: Phyllanthus amarus, Phyllanthus carolinianus, P. sellowianus, P. fraternus, P. kirganella, P. lathyroides, P. lonphali, P. niruri, P. polyphyllus etc. used for hepatitis, colds, flu, tuberculosis, and other viral infections; liver diseases and disorders including anemia, jaundice and liver cancer; and for bacterial infections such as cystitis, venereal diseases and urinary tract infections. Diabetes and hypertension are other disorders on which the wonder plant has profound effect on. Furthermore, extracts from P. amarus such as tannins and phenol have been associated with some medical importance. The tannins have antimicrobial activity. Even though this miracle herb has many therapeutic uses, here we will focus on its healing powers on:
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are responsible for its anti-viral activity. Phyllanthin is soluble in chloroform, has a melting point of 196 - 198C and a molecular weight of 418.53. They have been isolated from leaves along with others like Lignansniranthin, nirtetralin, and phyltetralin. They are major component of many popular liver tonics.

Hepatitis Kidney stones and Tumors Phyllanthus amarus

Phyllanthus urinaria Ref:www.easttennesseewildflowers.com/ gallery/view

Hepatitis
Hepatitis is a disorder that primarily affects the liver. The disorder causes swelling of the liver that makes it stop working well. It can lead to scarring, called cirrhosis, or to cancer.

Introduction
Phyllanthus, so aptly called the wonder plant perhaps has more useful properties to offer than mankind could ever use. The 10 subgenera of Phyllanthus have more than 700 species. It was first identified in central and southern India in 18th century but is now found in many countries including Philippine, Cuba, Nigeria among others. Biliary and urinary conditions including kidney and gallbladder stones are areas where Phyllanthus plays an important role. It is also

Phyllanthin- C24H34O6

Ref: journals.iucr.org

Action of Phyllanthus on hepatitis virus Phyllanthus attacks DNA polymerase, which is essential for Hepatitis virus to reproduce. It also inhibits reverse transcriptase. Phyllanthin and Hypophyllanthin are two plant chemicals found in Phyllanthus, which

Hypophyllanthin is soluble in ethanol, has a melting point of 128C - 129C and a molecular weight of 430.40. Phyllanthin and Hypophyllanthin are said to protect hepatocytes against carbon tetrachloride and galactosamine induced toxicity. They also reduce blood cholesterol and both LDL (low density lipoprotein) and VLDL (very low

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Effect of Phyllanthus on tumor

Phyllanthus amarus extract lowers tumor incidence, levels of carcinogen-metabolizing enzymes, and levels of liver cancer markers. Studies indicate that the plant has a better ability to prevent and slow down the growth of tumors rather than a direct toxic effect or ability to kill cancer cells.The anti-cancer activity of Phyllanthus amarus is attributed to the fact that the plant has ability to stop the cells from mutating. Several enzyme mediated processes particular to cancer cell replication and growth are inhibited in the presence of Phyllanthus, rather than a direct toxic effect of killing the cancer cell.

C24H30O7
density lipoprotein), the two forms of cholesterol susceptible to oxidation. They act by reducing the ability of the liver to synthesize cholesterol and by increasing faecal bile acids excretion. The role that this plant plays in liver disorders is due to its febrifuge, antiseptic, astringent, stomachic, deobstruent and diuretic actions aid for people with a history of kidney stones. Size of calcium crystals could be reduced by treatment with phyllanthus extract. Thereby it keeps the crystal formation at a size that facilitates easy and painless elimination.

Phyllanthus emblica -flower Ref: www.hindu.com

Tumors
The abnormal growth or cell division that is not regulated leads to tumor formation.It can be either malignant or benign. The cause of tumors are attributed to mutation in DNA of cells,which interfere with the ability of the cell to regulate cell division. The conventional treatments for tumour are radiation therapy,chemotherapy,surgery etc.unfortunately all these treatments are not without side effects.
Phyllanthus emblica Ref: www.banana-tree.com

Kidney Stones
The hard stone like masses that form in one or both kidneys are known as kidney stones.

Bioinformatics
Bioinformatics can be defined as the science of informatics as applied to biological research. Informatics is the management and analysis of data using advanced computing techniques. Bioinformatics is particularly important as an adjunct to genomics research, because of the large amount of complex data this research generates. The main problem is that the ability to generate vast quantities of data has surpassed the ability to use this data meaningfully. Creating databases can solve this problem. A database should provide all the information,

Side effects of conventional treatment

Acquired resistance to chemotherapy is a major obstacle to successful cancer treatment.In case of surgical removal there is a high chance of recurrence.On the long run radiation therapy too has devastating effects. Nearly all patients whose tumours initially respond to inhibitors, however, eventually become resistant to the drugs and progress despite of continued therapy.

Phyllanthus niruri Ref: http://www.dotcompalsphotoblog.com/index.php

Stonebreaker
Phyllanthus has the ability to block the formation of calcium oxalate crystals (the building blocks of most kidney stones), which indicates that it might be a useful preventative

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in this case, regarding the plant, species, therapeutic uses, details of protein, threedimensional structures, antiviral activity etc. This will certainly be useful to the members of scientific community, as they can access all the information they want at one stop. The field of Bioinformatics is crucial for validating potential drug targets and for determining which ones are the most suitable for entering the drug development pipeline. This in turn saves precious time. The active compounds phyllanthin, hypophyllanthin, lignansniranthin, nirtetralin, and phyltetralin can be used as lead compounds in drug designing and it could be used in targeting many more diseases than those known today.

Modelling proteins
Homology searches come into play when proteins are not modelled. With the help of different bioinformatics tools, such proteins could be modeled by looking for similar proteins.

Reference
h t t p : / / w w w. n u t r a s a n u s . c o m / p h y l l a n t h u s niruri.html Http://www.phyllanthus.net / index. htm http://www.motherherbs.com/phyllanthusniruri.html http://www.indianetzone.com/2/phyllanthus.htm http://www.ccl.net/cca/documents/dyoung/topicsorig/drug.html http://hcd2.bupa.co.uk/fact_sheets/html/Kidney_st ones.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tumor Http:www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/hepatitis.html http://www.food.gov.uk/science/ouradvisors/toxic ity/cotmeets/49737/49750/49831 http://www.healthscout.com/ency/68/39/main.htm l http://www.rain-tree.com/chanca.htm http://samistandards.com/displayStd.asp?cid=SL/ RS/078 www.samistandards.com/displayStd.asp?cid=SL/ RS/098 - 6k Http://www.diet-and-health.net/ Naturopathy/ Phyllanthus.html Khatoon,-S; Rai,-V; Rawat,-A-K; Mehrotra,-S JEthnopharmacol. 2006 Mar 8; 104(1-2): 79-86 Grande.nal.usda.gov/ibids/index.php?mode2=deta il&origin=ibids_references&therow=791345 Naik AD, Juvekar AR. Effects of alkaloidal extract of Phyllanthus niruri on HIV replication. Indian J Med Sci 2003;57:387 Calixto JB, Santos ARS, Filho VC, Yownes RA (1998). A review of the plants of the Phyllanthus: their chemistry, pharmacology and therapeutic potential. Med. Res. Rev. 18(4): 225-228 http://www.cfsn.com/chanca1.html Http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/CropFactSh eets/phyllanthus.html Ott, M,Thyagarajan, S.P.,Gupta, S., 1997 European Journal of Clinical Investigation, 11(27): 908 - 915 (8) http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/bsc/ejci/1 997/00000027/00000011/art00007; jsessionid=d65sfl4s9l8n6.alice? Format=print

Binding site prediction

The site of interaction of the drug in the protein plays a major role in designing drugs. Drugs could be designed in such a way that they fit the active site perfectly like a lock and key model and thus cause any drastic change in the biological activity of the protein. This consequently should lead to suppression of the disordered condition or diseased state.

Role of bioinformatics
The vast information present in different databases will certainly be of immense use when it comes to analysis of different active compounds extracted from a plant and it can eventually lead to preparation of useful drugs. Databases provide information on protein sequences, structure prediction and even whole genome sequences. Protein amino acid sequences can also be deduced from the base sequences of the nucleic acids that direct their synthesis. Proteins carrying out similar functions and proteins having the same function in different species almost always have closely related primary structures. Primary sequences are stored in databases. This enables predictions about the structure and function of other proteins, often of medical importance, to be made. Few proteins of certain species of phyllanthus have been sequenced and their nucleotide sequences and protein sequences have been stored in databases like NCBI, SWISS-PROT and DDBJ. Extracts obtained from phyllanthus could be sequenced by conventional methods like Mass spectrometry and Edmann degradation and could be stored in different databases for further use. In addition to this, there are computer tools that assist in DNA sequencing projects. The GCG sequencing project tools and sequencher program are two examples of such tools. The lead compounds that are responsible for the healing effect of Phyllanthus on different disorders like tumor, kidney stone and hepatitis could be identified.

Docking
Interaction of macromolecules with other molecules like proteins, nucleic acids or small drug-like molecules can be predicted by molecular docking.

Conclusion
Phyllanthus, the wonder plant's potentialities are yet to be fully utilized. This is where the field of bioinformatics lends a helping hand. The immense medicinal properties of Phyllanthus that can be explored by different tools in bioinformatics will lead to development of effective drugs; which will be a boon to mankind. The benefit Phyllanthus provides in cases of liver damage is mostly due to the plants anti-viral activity. Mankind has not been able to obtain many strongly anti-viral compounds. Antibiotics to fight bacteria are available in the market at a large scale. But when it comes to viral diseases, we are almost weaponless. The HIV or the various hepatitis viruses provide good examples for this condition. Many antiviral products of the pharmaceutical industry have disturbing, or worse, side effects. Unlike artificial pharmaceutical products, phyllanthus is practically free of side effects. Complete utilization of the medicinal values of this plant with the use of bioinformatics can take the science of pharmacology to another level.

About the Authors

Rakhee.R.Nair

Regin Susan Abraham

Sai's BioSciences Research Institute Pvt. Ltd. training@sbrionline.info www.sbrionline.info

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