Source : Straits Times, Singapore, 28 Jan '05
By : Straits Times
  

'Over the ages this intense, unending competition has engendered an abundance of small organic molecules with a structural diversity and biological potency as yet unrivalled by the best efforts and imaginations of scientists,' it said.

'More than 90 per cent of this vast resource remains unexplored for its biological potential, even though we are indebted to those natural products for over half of the drugs currently in production and many of those that are still in development.'

However, some gems have already emerged from Singapore's plants and animals.

• Associate Professor Benito Tan of the biological sciences department at the National University of Singapore, who has spent more than 20 years studying the simplest and most ancient plants - mosses and liverworts - said they contain special compounds found nowhere else.
  
  While these have not been well studied, they could one day be made into drugs to treat diseases. He has also identified 'hot spots' in the region where mosses proliferate, and has spent years campaigning for the protection of such areas.
   
• NUS dons Ding Jeak Ling and Ho Bow genetically engineered a copy of an enzyme called Factor C, found in local horseshoe crabs' blood. Previously, the creatures' blood was the sole source of the enzyme, which is used to test for contaminants in every drug and vaccine, artificial limb, and dialysis and intravenous drips.
   
• Common local produce, such as sweet potatoes, could be worth their weight in gold, said Associate Professor Yeoh Hock Hin of the NUS biological sciences department.

Together with engineering faculty researchers, he is testing the cassava root as an alternative structure for growing cells in tissue engineering. Enzymes isolated from the plant could also be used to replace expensive chemical compounds used in molecular biology experiments.