From:
http://www.cyclotide.com/discovery.html
"The cyclotides have been recognised as a family of novel circular proteins only in the last few years but the discovery of the first member of this family may be traced back to reports of native medicine applications in the early 1970s.
Kalata B1, was discovered because it is an active ingredient in a herbal medicine used by African women to assist childbirth . While on a Red Cross relief effort in the Congo region in the 1960s a Norwegian doctor, Lorents Gran, noted that during labour African women often ingested a tea made from leaves of the plant Oldenlandia affinis because of its uterotonic effects. The active ingredient was determined to be a peptide that was named kalata B1, after the local name for the native medicine. Subsequent in vivo studies in rats confirmed uterotonic activity of the purified peptide but it was not characterised as a macrocyclic peptide until some 20 year later."
Also
http://research.imb.uq.edu.au/cybase...age=node9.html
Michael
