Towards a paradigm shift in the fuctions of biologically active agents: herbicide-mediated hormesis

One of the most important points to which I pay particularly close attention in this paper is the action of biologically active chemicals (BACs) in the living things. Theoretically, the action of BACs manifests itself in four stages, which are determined by the doses from the smallest to the largest: absence of visible effects, stimulation of biochemical and growth processes, inhibition of growth processes and death of the living things. Today, scientific research is mainly focused on the second stage of BACs action. At the same time, using of herbicides (killers of unwanted plants) in agriculture give evidens that they stimulate the growth of beneficial plants. The paradigm of only the stimulating action of BACs should be replaced by the paradigm of events at all four stages of BACs action in living organisms. The article proposes the mechanisms of events at all four stages of BACs action. The main focus is on redox reactions. Mechanisms of transformation of inactive BACs into reactive agents in endogenous redox reactions are described. This article also aims to focus the discussion on the analysis of the diversity of mechanisms underlying the action of natural and synthetic chemical agents.