Question

Plants often store secondary metabolites that function to deter insect herbivores but are also toxic to plant cells.

How do plant cells avoid the toxicity of the secondary metabolites and still have the toxins deter insect herbivores?

Answer 1

Secondary metabolites are useful natural products that are synthesized in plants. But some metabolites are toxic to plants. Plants are having specific self-resistance mechanism such as extracellular excretion, vaccuolar sequestration, vesicle transport, extracellular biosynthesis, accumulation of the metabolite in a non-toxic form and mutation of the target protein of the toxic metabolite.