What is the advantage of using plant-derived antibacterials rather than bacteria-derived antibacterials?

Question

So obviously we have a big problem with antibiotic resistance. Most of our antibiotics originate from bacteria themselves (or are synthetic variations on scaffolds which originate from bacteria). I have heard it asserted that using antibacterials derived from plants would lessen the problem. One argument for the use of plants is that the bacteria from which we derive an antibiotic must themselves already be resistant to that antibiotic, meaning that the allele for resistance is already in the bacterial gene pool and when we exert a selection pressure by using the antibiotic, resistance will eventually appear among pathogenic species. Another argument I have heard is that plants can provide a lot of structurally diverse metabolites from which we might discover new classes of antibacterials.Is there anything else to this?(I know I have answered my own question to an extent, but I am wondering whether there are any other good reasons to look to plants for the next generation of antibacterial drugs).Thank you!

Answer 1

I happen to be working in the area of antimicrobials from plants at the moment with research students. One very practical reason to use antimicrobials from plants is the ease of access. Many plants would be easy to grow and maintain, would easily be scalable to large production, are probably safe for human consumption, and would naturally produce antimicrobials, literally "dirt cheap". Humans have used plants for their antimicrobial properties throughout recorded history, prior to even the discovery of microbes. It is definitely an underutilized reservoir of potential antimicrobials.

Dr. P