The development of traditional Chinese herbs is about to enter a new age featuring studies of the gene components of herbal medicines, according to a forum here Sunday.

Guo De'an, a Chinese herb expert at prestigious Beijing University, said that research into transgenic medicinal plants and organs, herb DNA molecule marking, and herb gene chips have emerged as some of the hottest research areas in recent years.

Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Medicine have used fungus to induce the growth of Chinese herbs and significantly increased the content of herbal tanshinone, marking important progress toward optimizing the varieties of Chinese herbs.

Sources said that the Hunan Institute of Chinese Medicine has put ginseng DNA in soybean and obtained new materials with higher medicinal contents.

Currently, incubation centers for medicinal organs transformed from some 10 herbs have been established, and key enzyme genes of arteannuin have been cloned.

Guo told the forum, which is part of the ongoing Beijing International Hi-Tech Industries Week, that genetic researches on Chinese herbs will help to facilitate as well as monitor the biological composition of the chemical contents of herbs.

The application of bio-technology in herbal research is becoming increasingly popular. Incubation of tissues and cells of medicinal plants has matured with practice over the past 20 to 30 years in China, said Guo.

He said that future research into herbal medicines should focus on cultivating cells of dying medicinal herbs and using biological methods to transform the chemical contents of key herbs.

From Healthy.net