Molecular biodiversity and recent analytical developments: A marriage of convenience

Exploring novel secondary metabolites from natural products using pre-processed mass spectral data

Many natural product chemists are working to identify a wide variety of novel secondary metabolites from natural materials and are eager to avoid repeatedly discovering known compounds. Here, we developed liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS) data-processing protocols for assessing high-throughput spectral data from natural sources and scoring the novelty of unknown metabolites from natural products. This approach automatically produces representative MS spectra (RMSs) corresponding to single secondary metabolites in natural sources. In this study, we used the RMSs of Agrimonia pilosa roots and aerial parts as models to reveal the structural similarities of their secondary metabolites and identify novel compounds, as well as isolation of three types of nine new compounds including three pilosanidin- and four pilosanol-type molecules and two 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl (HMG)-conjugated chromones. Furthermore, we devised a new scoring system, the Fresh Compound Index (FCI), which grades the novelty of single secondary metabolites from a natural material using an in-house database constructed from 466 representative medicinal plants from East Asian countries. We expect that the FCIs of RMSs in a sample will help natural product chemists to discover other compounds of interest with similar chemical scaffolds or novel compounds and will provide insights relevant to the structural diversity and novelty of secondary metabolites in natural products.

From Marine Origin to Therapeutics: The Antitumor Potential of Marine Algae-Derived Compounds

Marine environment has demonstrated to be an interesting source of compounds with uncommon and unique chemical features on which the molecular modeling and chemical synthesis of new drugs can be based with greater efficacy and specificity for the therapeutics. Cancer is a growing public health threat, and despite the advances in biomedical research and technology, there is an urgent need for the development of new anticancer drugs. In this field, it is estimated that more than 60% of commercially available anticancer drugs are natural biomimetic inspired. Among the marine organisms, algae have revealed to be one of the major sources of new compounds of marine origin, including those exhibiting antitumor and cytotoxic potential. These compounds demonstrated ability to mediate specific inhibitory activities on a number of key cellular processes, including apoptosis pathways, angiogenesis, migration and invasion, in both in vitro and in vivo models, revealing their potential to be used as anticancer drugs. This review will focus on the bioactive molecules from algae with antitumor potential, from their origin to their potential uses, with special emphasis to the alga Sphaerococcus coronopifolius as a producer of cytotoxic compounds.

Natural products chemistry: The emerging trends and prospective goals

The role and contributions of natural products chemistry in advancements of the physical and biological sciences, its interdisciplinary domains, and emerging of new avenues by providing novel applications, constructive inputs, thrust, comprehensive understanding, broad perspective, and a new vision for future is outlined. The developmental prospects in bio-medical, health, nutrition, and other interrelated sciences along with some of the emerging trends in the subject area are also discussed as part of the current review of the basic and core developments, innovation in techniques, advances in methodology, and possible applications with their effects on the sciences in general and natural products chemistry in particular. The overview of the progress and ongoing developments in broader areas of the natural products chemistry discipline, its role and concurrent economic and scientific implications, contemporary objectives, future prospects as well as impending goals are also outlined. A look at the natural products chemistry in providing scientific progress in various disciplines is deliberated upon.

Addressing Facts and Gaps in the Phenolics Chemistry of Winery By-Products

Grape and wine phenolics display a noticeable structural diversity, encompassing distinct compounds ranging from simple molecules to oligomers, as well as polymers usually designated as tannins. Since these compounds contribute critically to the organoleptic properties of wines, their analysis and quantification are of primordial importance for winery industry operators. Besides, the occurrence of these compounds has been also extensively described in winery residues, which have been pointed as a valuable source of bioactive phytochemicals presenting potential for the development of new added value products that could fit the current market demands. Therefore, the cumulative knowledge generated during the last decades has allowed the identification of the most promising compounds displaying interesting biological functions, as well as the chemical features responsible for the observed bioactivities. In this regard, the present review explores the scope of the existing knowledge, concerning the compounds found in these winery by-products, as well as the chemical features presumably responsible for the biological functions already identified. Moreover, the present work will hopefully pave the way for further actions to develop new powerful applications to these materials, thus, contributing to more sustainable valorization procedures and the development of newly obtained compounds with enhanced biological properties.

Potential applications of glucosyltransferases in terpene glucoside production: impacts on the use of aroma and fragrance

The detection of glucoconjugated forms of monoterpene alcohols in rose petals in the late 1960s opened the new field of nonvolatile aroma precursors in flavor research. It is now well established that odorless glycosides represent a significant pool of aroma precursors in plants where they act as preformed but inactivated defense or attractive chemicals. Technical improvements in the separation and identification of plant secondary metabolites have provided a multitude of chemical structures, but functional characterization of glycosyltransferases that catalyze their formation lags behind. As technical efforts and costs for DNA sequencing dramatically dropped during the last decade, the number of plant genome sequences increased significantly, thus providing opportunities to functionally characterize the glycosyltransferase gene families in plants. These studies yielded the first glycosyltransferase genes that encode efficient biocatalysts for the production of monoterpene glucosides. They have applications in the food, feed, chemical, cosmetic, and pharmaceutical industries as slow release aroma chemicals.