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Thiopeptide antibiotics, alpha-haloaldehydes, marine natural products and anticancer steroids – Your NPR issue 2


Welcome to NPR Issue 2, 2013

Issue 2s, home to the much awaited Marine Natural Products review by John Blunt et al., and much more.

Featuring on the front cover is the work of Jorge A. R. Salvador, M. Luisa Sá e Melo and colleagues at University of Coimbra and Universidade da Beira Interior (Portugal), illustrating their review detailing the anticancer activity of steroids.




In this issue:

Hot off the press
Robert A. Hill and Andrew Sutherland
DOI: 10.1039/C2NP90051C

A personal selection of 33 recent papers is presented covering various aspects of current developments in bioorganic chemistry and novel natural products such as breitfussin A from the Arctic hydrozoan Thuiaria breitfussi.

Biosynthesis of thiopeptide antibiotics and their pathway engineering
Qi Zhang and Wen Liu
DOI: 10.1039/C2NP20107K

A Highlight including advances during 2009–2012 in understanding the generality and specificity of thiopeptide biosynthesis, and on this basis, in expanding the structural diversity by pathway engineering.

 α-Haloaldehydes: versatile building blocks for natural product synthesis
Robert Britton and Baldip Kang
DOI: 10.1039/C2NP20108A

This Highlight summarizes the organocatalytic processes available for the enantioselective preparation of α-haloaldehydes and their stereoselective conversion into natural products.

Marine natural products
John W. Blunt, Brent R. Copp, Robert A. Keyzers, Murray H. G. Munro and Michèle R. Prinsep
DOI: 10.1039/C2NP20112G

The much awaited Marine Natural Products review article! Included is an example of the development of genome mining for the discovery of new compounds from marine microbes leading to the finding of salinosporamide K from Salinispora pacifica.

Missed the previous ones? Catch up with the past 5 years of this series:
Marine Natural Products – 2012
Marine Natural Products – 2011
Marine Natural Products – 2010
Marine Natural Products – 2009
Marine Natural Products – 2008

Anticancer steroids: linking natural and semi-synthetic compounds
Jorge A. R. Salvador, João F. S. Carvalho, Marco A. C. Neves, Samuel M. Silvestre, Alcino J. Leitão, M. Manuel C. Silva and M. Luisa Sá e Melo
DOI: 10.1039/C2NP20082A

Steroids, a widespread class of natural compounds, have shown great therapeutic value for a broad array of pathologies. This overview is focused on their anticancer activity, which is very representative of a rich structural diversity and ability to interact with various biological targets and pathways.

Want to see your work in NPR?

Reviews, Highlights and Viewpoints in NPR are generally solicited by members of the editorial board; however we are happy to consider submission enquiries from authors. If you are interested in writing an article for NPR please contact the editorial office with a brief synopsis.

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Welcome to Professor Daniel Romo who joins the NPR Editorial Board

We are delighted to announce the appointment of Professor Daniel Romo to the Editorial Board of Natural Products Reports, as of January 2013. 

Daniel Romo received his B.A. in chemistry/biology from Texas A&M and a PhD in Chemistry from Colorado State University as a NSF Minority Graduate Fellow under the tutelage of the late Prof. Albert I. Meyers. Following postdoctoral studies at Harvard as an American Cancer Society Fellow, with Prof. Stuart L. Schreiber, he began his independent career at TexasA&M in 1993 and is currently Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Natural Products LINCPHIN Laboratory (TAMU).

Research interests in the Romo Group are at the interface of chemistry and biology focused on total synthesis and biomechanistic studies of natural products and the asymmetric synthesis and application of beta-lactones in organic synthesis and as potential drug candidates. This search led Romo to examine marine specimens –  many recent bioactive molecules have been discovered in marine species that are now making their way to the clinic.
Romo sees natural products as playgrounds for developing new synthetic strategies and making related compounds with potentially important therapeutic applications. Natural products are keys to cell biology, and he is working to build the bridge between synthesis and biology.

‘If I couldn’t be dreaming up ways to make natural products, I would want to be diving to isolate those natural products and fishing from the deck on my off time!’ says Daniel.

Why not read Daniel Romo’s latest NPR review article:

Biosynthesis, asymmetric synthesis, and pharmacology, including cellular targets, of the pyrrole-2-aminoimidazole marine alkaloids
Ali Al-Mourabit, Manuel A. Zancanella, Supriya Tilvi and Daniel Romo
DOI: 10.1039/C0NP00013B

 
NPR benefits from the expertise of exceptional scientists guiding the development of the journal. Do you know who they are? Find out more on our Editorial and Advisory Board members.
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Meet the NPR Editorial team – see where and when you can meet us in 2013

The Natural Product Reports Editorial team will be attending a number of conferences in 2013 and we would be delighted to meet you there.  

We’re also the team behind NPR’s sister journals Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry, MedChemComm, and the latest addition to the portfolio, Toxicology Research, so we’ll happily discuss your interdisciplinary research work. In fact, many of our authors choose to publish their research across all of these titles.    

Here are just some of the conferences where you can meet us in the coming months:  

RSC India Roadshow, visiting Kolkata, Pune and Bangalore – 5-11 February 2013, India – View the full details, including the confirmed speakers’ list– Meet Richard
Society of Toxicology’s 52nd Annual Meeting –10-14 March 2013, San Antonio, Texas, USA – Meet Marie
40th Lakeland Heterocyclic meeting – 9-13 May 2013, Grasmere, UK – Meet Marie
Frontiers in Medicinal Chemistry (EFMC) – 23-26 June 2013, San Francisco, USA – Meet Richard
8-ISMSC (International Symposium on Macrocyclic and Supramolecular Chemistry) – 07-11 July 2013, Washington DC, USA – Meet Richard
ESOC 2013 (8th European Symposium on Organic Chemistry) – 08-12 July 2013, Marseille, France – Meet Marie
OMCOS 17 (IUPAC Conference on Organometallic Chemistry Towards Organic Synthesis)- 28 July to 01 August 2013, Fort Collins, USA – Meet Marie
EUROTOX 2013– 01-04 September 2013, Interlaken, Switzerland – Meet Marie
Fall ACS meeting– 08-12 September 2013, Indianapolis, USA – Meet Richard
Asian Medicinal Chemistry Conference – October 2013, Taipei, Taiwan – Meet Richard
15th BMOS – Brazilian Meeting on Organic Synthesis, 10-13 November 2013, Campos do Jordão, Brazil – Meet Richard    

Let us know if you are planning on attending any of these meetings, as it would be lovely to see you there!   

     

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Welcome to NPR issue 1, 2013 – beta-lactams, flavoenzymes, and much more

Welcome to NPR Issue 1, 2013!

At NPR we’re kick-starting the New Year with a selection of exciting Highlight and Review articles we think you will like…

Interested in antibiotics? Read works by Yeo Joon Yoon et al. highlighting aminoglycosides, the review by Christopher J. Schofield et al. on biosynthetic pathways leading to the different classes of β-lactam antibiotics (cover article), or learn all about the tiacumicin odyssey in this overview by Jieping Zhu et al. of the chemistry and biology of tiacumicins since their discovery to the marketed drug.

Speaking of ribosomally synthesized natural products? Wilfred van der Donk led an impressive international multiauthored article on establishing a uniform and readily recognized nomenclature for ribosomally synthesized and posttranslationally modified natural products. The whole community came together and made a recommendation, the results of which you can read in this article. Read more about it in this post.

This issue wouldn’t be complete without Christopher Walsh and Timothy A. Wencewicz’s work on flavoenzymes as versatile catalysts in biosynthetic pathways, that enable the many chemical transformations building complexity in the biosynthesized natural products architecture.

All these articles are Free to Access for an unlimited period  – enjoy and spread the word!

 Want to see your work in NPR?

Reviews, Highlights and Viewpoints in NPR are generally solicited by members of the editorial board; however we are happy to consider submission enquiries from authors. If you are interested in writing an article for NPR please contact the editorial office with a brief synopsis.

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Natural Products in OBC – access our latest selection

Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry, our sister journal, publishes many articles that cover a variety of natural product chemistry.

We try to keep you updated here, although your best bet is for you to sign up to OBC’s e-alert (free service), and receive the tables of content directly in your inbox every time an issue is published.

Hand-picked for you from the latest issues are:

Intramolecular nitrone dipolar cycloadditions: control of regioselectivity and synthesis of naturally-occurring spirocyclic alkaloids
Alastair J. Hodges, Joseph P. Adams, Andrew D. Bond, Andrew B. Holmes, Neil J. Press, Stephen D. Roughley, John H. Ryan, Simon Saubern, Catherine J. Smith, Michael D. Turnbull and Annabella F. Newton
DOI: 10.1039/C2OB26333E, Paper

You will have spotted in this article’s authors list Annabella Newton, who contributes to the OBC blogs as a guest web-writer. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher based in Melbourne, Australia. Why not read some of her posts here:
One for all and all for one: shape-shifting organic molecules that spontaneously resolve
Supramolecular chemistry: synthetic ion channels

A furan Diels–Alder cycloaddition approach to scyphostatin analogues
Calum J. Fraser, Gareth P. Howell and Joseph P. A. Harrity
DOI: 10.1039/C2OB26793D, Paper

Spiralisones A–D: acylphloroglucinol hemiketals from an Australian marine brown alga, Zonaria spiralis
Hua Zhang, Xue Xiao, Melissa M. Conte, Zeinab Khalil and Robert J. Capon
DOI: 10.1039/C2OB26988K, Paper

Total syntheses of pamamycin 607 and methyl nonactate: stereoselective cyclisation of homoallylic alcohols that had been prepared with remote stereocontrol using allylstannanes
Olivier Germay, Naresh Kumar, Christopher G. Moore and Eric J. Thomas
DOI: 10.1039/C2OB26801A, Paper

We hope you enjoy this selection! Let us know what you think…

… and why not submit your latest natural product research to OBC today?

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Organic natural guanidines on the cover of NPR Issue 12, 2012

Welcome to NPR Issue 12, 2012

This month sees the work of Roberto Berlinck et al. on the cover, with a review showcasing naturally occurring guanidine compounds. Spanning natural guanidines from terrestrial, marine and freshwater microorganisms, marine invertebrates, sponges, or higher plants, the article highlights the newly isolated compounds along with their synthesis and biological properties.

The chemistry and biology of organic guanidine derivatives
Roberto G. S. Berlinck, Amaro E. Trindade-Silva and Mario F. C. Santos

This is the latest review on the topic, however this area is updated regularly. Why not also read some of the previous editions of this review, covering the time periods 2005/07, 2008/09.

Issue 12 also features the latest Hot of the Press, and reviews covering:

The impact of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity on natural products research
Gordon M. Cragg, Flora Katz, David J. Newman and Joshua Rosenthal
DOI: 10.1039/C2NP20091K

Investigations of the marine flora and fauna of the Fiji Islands
Klaus-Dieter Feussner, Kavita Ragini, Rohitesh Kumar, Katy M. Soapi, William G. Aalbersberg, Mary Kay Harper, Brad Carte and Chris M. Ireland
DOI: 10.1039/C2NP20055D

Ursane-type pentacyclic triterpenoids as useful platforms to discover anticancer drugs
Jorge A. R. Salvador, Vânia M. Moreira, Bruno M. F. Gonçalves, Ana S. Leal and Yongkui Jing
DOI: 10.1039/C2NP20060K

We hope you enjoy the issue!

And why not publish with us too? If you are interested in writing an article for NPR, please contact us at the editorial office.

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Natural Products in OBC – access our latest selection

Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry, our sister journal, publishes many articles that cover a variety of natural product chemistry.

We try to keep you updated here, although your best bet is for you to sign up to OBC’s e-alert (free service), and receive the tables of content directly in your inbox every time an issue is published.

Concise construction of the tetracyclic core of lycorine-type alkaloids and the formal synthesis of α-lycorane based on asymmetric bifunctional thiourea-catalyzed cascade reaction
Yao Wang, Yong-Chun Luo, Hong-Bo Zhang and Peng-Fei Xu
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2012,10, 8211-8215
DOI: 10.1039/C2OB26422F, Paper

Triterpenoids functionalized at C-2 as diagenetic transformation products of 2,3-dioxygenated triterpenoids from higher plants in buried wood
Gilles Schnell, Philippe Schaeffer, Estelle Motsch and Pierre Adam
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2012,10, 8276-8282
DOI: 10.1039/C2OB26191J, Paper

Total synthesis of noricumazole B establishes D-arabinose as glycan unit
Jenny Barbier, Klaus Gerth, Rolf Jansen and Andreas Kirschning
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2012,10, 8298-8307
DOI: 10.1039/C2OB26256H, Paper

The furan route to tropolones: probing the antiproliferative effects of β-thujaplicin analogs
E. Zachary Oblak, Erin S. D. Bolstad, Sophia N. Ononye, Nigel D. Priestley, M. Kyle Hadden and Dennis L. Wright
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2012,10, 8597-8604
DOI: 10.1039/C2OB26553B, Communication

Baylis–Hillman acetates in organic synthesis: convenient one-pot synthesis of α-carboline framework – a concise synthesis of neocryptolepine
Deevi Basavaiah and Daggula Mallikarjuna Reddy
Org. Biomol. Chem., 2012,10, 8774-8777
DOI: 10.1039/C2OB26339D, Communication

Guest edited by Professor Christopher Walsh and Dr Sylvie Garneau-Tsdodikova, the issue contains some of the newest discoveries in the field, along with 9 review articles that will lead the reader through exciting natural products research. Let us know what you think!

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Natural Product Updates: now structure-searchable in ChemSpider

Natural Product Updates

Natural Product Updates (NPU) provides graphical abstracts of new developments in natural product chemistry, selected from dozens of key primary journals. Coverage includes:

  • Isolation studies
  • Biosynthesis
  • New natural products
  • Known compounds from new sources
  • Structure determinations
  • New properties and biological activities     

Around 200 graphical abstracts are contained in each monthly bulletin, including structure diagrams, trivial and taxonomic names, molecular formulae, physical and biological properties

Browse this Database

Subscribers to the monthly print bulletin also have free access to Natural Product Updates Online – the fully searchable web database which allows users to search across all items published in Natural Product Updates to date. This service provides full text search capability on a variety of terms.

An email alerting service is also available, allowing users to sign up for an email message every time a new monthly bulletin is published online.

Natural Product Updates, is now structure searchable in ChemSpider

Want to know more about ChemSpider?

Read all about the free chemical structure database providing fast search access to over 26 million structures from hundreds of data sources, and follow the latest news and development on the ChemSpider blog.

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Plant defense mechanisms on the cover of NPR Issue 11

Welcome to Natural Product Reports Issue 11, 2012

The cover this month illustrates work by Massimo E. Maffei (University of Turin) et al. presenting the diversity of plants defense mechanisms that are activated when plants are under attack from potentially dangerous microbes and insect herbivores, and plant-plant interactions. Enjoy FREE access to this article for the next 6 weeks upon a simple registration process:

Natural elicitors, effectors and modulators of plant responses
Massimo E. Maffei, Gen-Ichiro Arimura and Axel Mithöfer
DOI: 10.1039/C2NP20053H

Also in this issue, read:

Bioactive natural products from Lysobacter
Yunxuan Xie, Stephen Wright, Yuemao Shen and Liangcheng Du
DOI: 10.1039/C2NP20064C

Natural product ‘legal highs’
Warunya Arunotayanun and Simon Gibbons
DOI: 10.1039/C2NP20068F

Natural stilbenoids: distribution in the plant kingdom and chemotaxonomic interest in Vitaceae
Céline Rivière, Alison D. Pawlus and Jean-Michel Mérillon
DOI: 10.1039/C2NP20049J

Natural sesquiterpenoids
Braulio M. Fraga
DOI: 10.1039/C2NP20074K

Guest edited by Professor Christopher Walsh and Dr Sylvie Garneau-Tsdodikova, the issue contains some of the newest discoveries in the field, along with 9 review articles that will lead the reader through exciting natural products research. Let us know what you think!

         

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Natural Products in OBC: our latest selection

Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry, our sister journal, publishes many articles that cover a variety of natural product chemistry.

We try to keep you updated here, although your best bet is for you to sign up to OBC’s e-alert (free service), and receive the tables of content directly in your inbox every time an issue is published.

  • The latest natural products’ related articles have been collated here:

Novel approach to biscarbazole alkaloids via Ullmann coupling – synthesis of murrastifoline-A and bismurrayafoline-A
Carsten Börger, Olga Kataeva and Hans-Joachim Knölker

Novel ring chemistry of vitamin B6 with singlet oxygen and an activated ene: isolated products and identified intermediates suggesting an operable [3 + 2] cycloadditionDavid Samuel, Kirsten Norrell and David G. Hilmey

Total synthesis of the marine toxin phorboxazole A using palladium(II)-mediated intramolecular alkoxycarbonylation for tetrahydropyran synthesis
Punlop Kuntiyong, Tae Hee Lee, Christian L. Kranemann and James D. White

Synthesis and biological evaluation of novel isoellipticine derivatives and salts
Charlotte M. Miller, Elaine C. O’Sullivan, Ken J. Devine and Florence O. McCarthy

Total synthesis of epothilones using functionalised allylstannanes for remote stereocontrol
Nathaniel Martin and Eric J. Thomas

Revisiting sesquiterpene biosynthetic pathways leading to santalene and its analogues: a comprehensive mechanistic study
Garima Jindal and Raghavan B. Sunoj

Stereoselective total synthesis of dinemasone A by double intramolecular hetero-Michael addition (DIHMA)
Gangavaram V. M. Sharma, Gourishetty Srikanth and Pothula Purushotham Reddy

Asymmetric synthesis of a highly functionalized enantioenriched system close to thapsigargin framework
Aurélien Tap, Morgan Jouanneau, Gilles Galvani, Geoffroy Sorin, Marie-Isabelle Lannou, Jean-Pierre Férézou and Janick Ardisson

Synthesis and biological evaluation of a potent salicylihalamide A lactam analogue
Dan Balan, Christopher J. Burns, Nicholas G. Fisk, Helmut Hügel, David C. S. Huang, David Segal, Charlotte White, Jörg Wagler and Mark A. Rizzacasa

Organocatalytic asymmetric syntheses of inthomycins A, B and C
Madoka Yoshino, Kohei Eto, Keisuke Takahashi, Jun Ishihara and Susumi Hatakeyama

Guest edited by Professor Christopher Walsh and Dr Sylvie Garneau-Tsdodikova, the issue contains some of the newest discoveries in the field, along with 9 review articles that will lead the reader through exciting natural products research. Let us know what you think!

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