Open Access Austin Journal of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Research Article A Comparative Phylogenetic Evaluation of Chloroplast ITS Sequences to Analyze the Bioactivity in Medicinal Plants: A Case Study of Clerodendrum Plant Genus (Lamiaceae) Melapu VK1, Joginipelli S1, Naidu BVA2 and Darsey J3* Abstract 1Department of Bioinformatics, University of Arkansas at According to World Health Organization (WHO) approximately 47% of drugs Little Rock, USA used today to cure many diseases were derived from natural products such as 2Department of Botany, Andhra University, India plants. Although many approved and clinical-trial drugs have been derived from 3Department of Chemistry, University of Arkansas at natural products, the last 20 years have shifted emphasis from natural products Little Rock, USA to less expensive synthetic products. Due to the paucity of traditional medicinal *Corresponding author: Darsey J, Department of knowledge and lack of ethnobotanical information about most of the medicinal Chemistry, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, 2801 plants, the emphasis has shifted to synthetic products. Multidisciplinary research S. University Ave, Little Rock, AR 72204, Tel: 501-569- with phylogeny to incorporate ethnobotanical knowledge as well as traditional 8828; Email:
[email protected] medicinal knowledge will facilitate researchers to identify new drug molecules. In this paper, we use phylogeny inferred from ITS sequence of chloroplast Received: March 17, 2015; Accepted: April 01, 2015; DNA of thirty eight different species of Clerodendrum plant to predict chemical Published: April 08, 2015 diversity and potential medicinal activity of plants from Lamiaceae family. Phylogenetic signal in medicinal properties in plants is used to identify nodes on phylogeny with high bioscreeing potential.