PERSPECTIVE article
Front. Ecol. Evol.
Sec. Chemical Ecology
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fevo.2025.1658630
The eco-evolutionary raison d'être of natural products as support for sustainable bioprospecting
Provisionally accepted
- 1Universidade Federal Fluminense Instituto de Biologia, Niterói, Brazil
- 2Universidade Federal da Bahia, Salvador, Brazil
- 3Jardim Botanico do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Since time immemorial, a wide range of terrestrial, aquatic, and marine organisms have been used to treat illnesses and diseases, owing to the broad diversity of natural products they produce. Although widely recognized for their medicinal properties, natural products are fundamentally the result of adaptive chemistry - or phenotypic expression - of the organisms that produce them, shaped by evolutionary pressures from natural environmental enemies. This article examines natural products through ecological, evolutionary, and conservation lenses, highlighting how these perspectives add complexity to the already lengthy and costly process of bioprospecting. Due to their origin and evolutionary history, only a small fraction of the many screened natural products exhibits biological activity relevant to human health, as these compounds did not evolve to possess pharmacological properties. Our viewpoint emphasizes the true raison d'être of the vast diversity of natural products and argues that this perspective should be integrated into bioprospecting efforts. We propose focus on the ecological roles of natural products to offer a more rational, productive, and sustainable approach to drug discovery - one that aligns with biodiversity conservation and economic development.
Keywords: secondary metabolites, Bioprospection, Chemical diversity, Adaptive chemistry, biodiversity conservation
Received: 02 Jul 2025; Accepted: 29 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Pereira, Ramos and Moreira. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Renato Crespo Pereira, rcrespo@id.uff.br
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.