Chemicals that cure malaria can kill weeds too (2017)

news.uwa.edu.au

18 points·6177c40f··14 comments

Careful - overuse (such as with plants) might promote resistance in the malaria chain…

The malaria parasite Plasmodium has an organelle called the apicoplast which is biologically very similar to the chloroplast of plants (and is believed to share an evolutionary history with it). So it makes sense biologically that an anti-malarial drug could also work against plants if the apicoplast is affected.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apicoplast

"Weeds" are a purely social construct, meaning only plants which humans don't like. These chemicals kill plants, not just weeds.

Clearly removing all plants gets rid of all weeds as well. I see no problems here.

somewhat related xkcd comic https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/cells.png

Correct, we want something that selectively kills specific types of plants that aren't desired in agricultural contexts. We have lots of ways of killing plants.

The original paper is pretty clear that they're talking about killing plants, not just weeds, but that it might be useful for targeting weeds with it.[1]

Roundup, which they mention, is another example. It kills anything leafy (that isn't Roundup ready), but people call it a weed killer anyway.

Can't believe the original comment was flagged.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/srep45871

Plants are also known to be hostile to other plants. For example, leaves of walnut trees contain natural herbicides that stop other trees from growing and become competition. This is just another example of such behavior.

Some of the foremost pesticide manufacturers include Bayer, Merck, Colgate-Palmolive, SC Johnson, and Procter & Gamble.

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