PLANT biologists at the University of Western Australia have revealed the relationship between plants and the parasite that causes malaria is close enough to mean many antimalarial drugs are effective herbicides.
Joshua Mylne, a plant geneticist and principal investigator with UWA's School of Molecular Sciences, said herbicides were integral for modern day agriculture, but the success of glyphosate and spiralling costs to develop new herbicides had stymied progress.
"In the past 30 years no new herbicide mode of action has been brought to market during a time that over 500 new cases of herbicide resistance have appeared," Dr Mylne said.
Co-author and organic chemist Associate Professor Keith Stubbs said antimalarial drugs were ideal as starting points because they were non-toxic to humans and often had the right chemical properties to also affect plants.
Lead author and PhD student Maxime Corral said the finding would enable researchers to use knowledge about antimalarial drugs and even the drugs themselves to develop new herbicides against weeds.
"By working with the tiny seeds of the model plant Arabidopsis, we can test thousands of compounds at the same time," he said.
"Making this connection doesn't just mean working with antimalarials such as herbicides; it also means you can think about what antimalarial modes of action are not being exploited by herbicides and whether they could be."
Dr Mylne also sees a more ambitious use for this connection.
"Despite decades of use, the way some antimalarial drugs work remains unknown," Dr Mylne said.
"Plants are easy to work with so we might be able to use plant genetics to reveal how antimalarial drugs work."
The research was published in the journal Scientific Reports.
