South Africa has a long history and strong belief in traditional herbal medicines. Using ethnobotanical knowledge as a lead, a large number of South African medicinal plants have been discovered to possess a wide spectrum of pharmacological properties. In this review, bioprospecting of endophytes is highlighted by following the advantages of the ethnomedicinal approach together with identifying unique medicinal plants where biological activity may be due to endophytes. This review focuses on the current status of South African medicinal plants to motivate the research community to harness the benefits of ethnobotanical knowledge to investigate the presence of endophytic microbes from the most potent South African medicinal plants. The potential chemical diversity and subsequent putative medicinal value of endophytes is deserving of further research. A timely and comprehensive review of literature on recently isolated endophytes and their metabolites was conducted. Worldwide literature from the last 2 years demonstrating the importance of ethnobotanical knowledge as a useful approach to discover endophytic microbes was documented. Information was obtained from scientific databases such as Pubmed, Scopus, Scirus, Google Scholar, Dictionary of Natural Products, Chemical Abstracts Services, official websites, and scientific databases on ethnomedicines. Primary sources such as books, reports, dissertations, and thesises were accessed where available. Recently published information on isolated endophytes with promising bioactivity and their bioactive natural products worldwide (2015-2017) was summarized. The potential value of South African medicinal plants as sources of endophytes is discussed. The insights provided through this study indicate that medicinal plants in South Africa are highly under-investigated sources of potentially useful endophytic microbes. New approaches may be used by medicinal plant scientists for further exploration of natural products from endophytic fungi and bacteria in southern Africa.
Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutical Science
6
4%
Immunology and Microbiology
5
4%
Other
17
13%
Unknown
52
38%
Attention Score in Context
Attention Score in Context
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 3. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 06 June 2018.
All research outputs
#13,021,831
of 23,055,429 outputs
Outputs from Frontiers in Pharmacology
#3,622
of 16,383 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#157,104
of 328,264 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Frontiers in Pharmacology
#99
of 409 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 23,055,429 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 43rd percentile – i.e., 43% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 16,383 research outputs from this source. They receive a mean Attention Score of 5.0. This one has done well, scoring higher than 77% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 409 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 75% of its contemporaries.
