Medicinal plants remain a major source of bioactive compounds, yet the key molecules underlying medicinal value and the mechanisms governing their biosynthesis are often incompletely resolved. This review summarizes the major classes, spatial distribution patterns, and lineage specificity of bioactive substances in medicinal plants, and discusses two complementary research routes: pathway elucidation guided by known major compounds and candidate prioritization driven by tissue-level chemical divergence. We further highlight how high-quality genomes, single-cell and spatial omics, comparative genomics, and heterologous reconstruction are reshaping the field from descriptive metabolite cataloguing toward mechanistic analysis at cellular resolution. Finally, we discuss current bottlenecks and future directions for integrating bioactive compound identification with pathway elucidation, regulatory analysis, and translational application.
Yang et al. (2026) studied this question.