Natural Products Blog

Thomson Reuters have just released their 2012 Journal Citation Reports^®  and Natural Product Reports is #1 in both the Chemistry: Medicinal and Chemistry: Organic categories with an impact factor figure of 10.178!

With a truly international authorship publishing accessible and reader-friendly articles, NPR is the home of high impact, critical reviews in natural products research and related areas. The scope of the journal is broad and many reviews discuss the role of natural products in the wider bioinorganic, bioorganic and chemical biology communities. Areas covered include enzymology, nucleic acids, genetics, chemical ecology, carbohydrates, primary and secondary metabolism and analytical techniques.

Read the latest articles

Natural Product Reports’ key features:

• An excellent and professional service
• International editorial board, authorship and readership
• Indexed in MEDLINE and other major databases
• Free use of colour when it enhances the scientific understanding 

This is why Natural Product Reports is the leading journal in its field!

Thank you to all the authors, referees, readers and the members of our Editorial and Advisory Boards for your continued support which has led to this fantastic result.

The successes of all of RSC journals’ in the recent impact factor release can be found here, highlighting the quality of our publications.

Welcome to NPR Issue 3, 2013

I do not know about you, but I find these circular genome data visualization plots make amazing covers. The one featured on this month’s issue illustrates the exciting review article by Christian Hertweck et al., presenting a genomic approach to the cryptic secondary metabolome of the anaerobic word.

Read this article for Free for the next 6 weeks – and let us know what you think by posting a comment below!

You will remember that Professor Hertweck was the winner of the 2011 NPR Lecture Award, and so that you may read more about his work at the forefront of natural products research, we’ve collated two of his previous NPR review articles below:

The chemistry and biology of cytochalasans
Kirstin Scherlach, Daniela Boettger, Nicole Remme and Christian Hertweck
Nat. Prod. Rep., 2010, 27, 869-886 

Type II polyketide synthases: gaining a deeper insight into enzymatic teamwork
Christian Hertweck, Andriy Luzhetskyy, Yuri Rebets and Andreas Bechthold
Nat. Prod. Rep., 2007, 24, 162-190 

This issue’s Highlight article is by John A. Porco Jr. et al. and summarizes key advancements in the construction of polycyclic xanthones, which have recently attracted significant attention due to their potential as antitumour agents.

Then, Victoria L. Challinor and James J. De Voss review the structure elucidation, bioactivities, biosynthesis, and distribution in the plant kingdom of open-chain steroidal glycosides, which represent a numerous, structurally diverse class of plant saponins.

Finally Yonghong Liu et al. provide an up-to-date account of sesterterpenoids, which structural conciseness and diverse bioactivity have made them attractive targets to the synthetic chemist, with biomedical purposes. 

Short and sweet, a selection we hope you will like!

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.

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

• Have you read the Natural Products themed issue from our sister journal MedChemComm?

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!

Welcome to Natural Product Reports Issue 8, 2012

Featuring on this month’s cover is work by Hajer Abdelkafi and Bastien Nay at the Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle (CNRS-MNHN, Paris, France) on natural products from the Cephalotaxus sp., which belongs to the Cephalotaxaceae family of conifers.

This genus has showed to provide both interesting alkaloids with anticancer potential, and original norditerpene tropones with cytotoxic activity. In this review article the authors present a phytochemical update and discuss the total synthesis of alkaloids and terpenoids in detail.

Natural products from Cephalotaxus sp.: chemical diversity and synthetic aspects
Hajer Abdelkafi and Bastien Nay
DOI: 10.1039/C2NP20037F

Why not also read in this issue:

Robert A. Hill and Andrew Sutherland’s Hot off the Press showcasing a personal selection of 32 recent papers covering current developments in bioorganic chemistry and novel natural products such as lycojaponicumin A from Lycopodium japonicum:

• Hot off the Press
  Robert A. Hill and Andrew Sutherland
  DOI: 10.1039/C2NP90024F

• Biosynthesis of mycobacterial methylglucose lipopolysaccharides
  Vitor Mendes, Ana Maranha, Susana Alarico and Nuno Empadinhas
  DOI: 10.1039/C2NP20014G

• The generation of “unNatural” products: Synthetic biology meets synthetic chemistry
  Rebecca J. M. Goss, Sreejith Shankar and Antoine Abou Fayad
  DOI: 10.1039/C2NP00001F

• Diterpenoids of terrestrial origin
  James R. Hanson
  DOI: 10.1039/C2NP20051A

• Strained cyclophane natural products: Macrocyclization at its limits
  Tanja Gulder and Phil S. Baran
  DOI: 10.1039/C2NP20034A

Like what you read? If you would like to contribute an article to NPR, please contact the editorial office with a proposed topic and we will be pleased to evaluate your synopsis.