Natural Products Blog

Biosynthesis, pharmacology, organic synthesis and more: the pick of 2012’s Natural Product Reports articles

20 Nov 2012

In 2012 Natural Product Reports published critical and thought-provoking reviews across a broad range of areas of natural products research, including biosynthesis, synthesis, pharmacology, marine & terrestrial natural products, carbohydrates and analytical chemistry. Below are some of the most-accessed articles from 2012:

Marine natural products
John W. Blunt , Brent R. Copp , Robert A. Keyzers , Murray H. G. Munro and Michèle R. Prinsep
Nat. Prod. Rep., 2012, 29, 144-222

The chemical ecology of cyanobacteria
Pedro N. Leão , Niclas Engene , Agostinho Antunes , William H. Gerwick and Vitor Vasconcelos
Nat. Prod. Rep., 2012, 29, 372-391

Electrophilic natural products and their biological targets
Malte Gersch , Johannes Kreuzer and Stephan A. Sieber
Nat. Prod. Rep., 2012, 29, 659-682

Angucyclines: Biosynthesis, mode-of-action, new natural products, and synthesis
Madan K. Kharel , Pallab Pahari , Micah D. Shepherd , Nidhi Tibrewal , S. Eric Nybo, Khaled A. Shaaban and Jürgen Rohr
Nat. Prod. Rep., 2012, 29, 264-325

Advances in Aspergillus secondary metabolite research in the post-genomic era
James F. Sanchez , Amber D. Somoza , Nancy P. Keller and Clay C. C. Wang
Nat. Prod. Rep., 2012, 29, 351-371

Sesquiterpene synthases: Passive catalysts or active players?
David J. Miller and Rudolf K. Allemann
Nat. Prod. Rep., 2012, 29, 60-71

Synthetic approaches toward sesterterpenoids
Daniel T. Hog , Robert Webster and Dirk Trauner
Nat. Prod. Rep., 2012, 29, 752-779

Strained cyclophane natural products: Macrocyclization at its limits
Tanja Gulder and Phil S. Baran
Nat. Prod. Rep., 2012, 29, 899-934

Natural stilbenoids: distribution in the plant kingdom and chemotaxonomic interest in Vitaceae
Céline Rivière , Alison D. Pawlus and Jean-Michel Mérillon
Nat. Prod. Rep., 2012, 29, 1317-1333

NMR in natural products: understanding conformation, configuration and receptor interactions
Teresa Carlomagno
Nat. Prod. Rep., 2012, 29, 536-554

Rare and unusual glycosylation of peptides and proteins
Pierre Lafite and Richard Daniellou
Nat. Prod. Rep., 2012, 29, 729-738

The structures of type I polyketide synthases
Adrian T. Keatinge-Clay
Nat. Prod. Rep., 2012, 29, 1050-1073

And why not preview some of the first articles in 2013?:

Ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptide natural products: overview and recommendations for a universal nomenclature
Wilfred A. van der Donk et al.
Nat. Prod. Rep., 2013, DOI: 10.1039/c2np20085f

The enzymes of β-lactam biosynthesis
Refaat B. Hamed, J. Ruben Gomez-Castellanos, Luc Henry, Christian Ducho, Michael A. McDonough and Christopher J. Schofield
Nat. Prod. Rep., 2013, DOI: 10.1039/C2NP20065A

Sign up for e-alerts to have the contents listings for latest issues sent straight to your inbox. For more information about Natural Product Reports and to view all of the journal’s content, please visit the website at www.rsc.org/npr.

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

12 Nov 2012

By Marie Cote, Deputy Editor.

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

31 Oct 2012

By Marie Cote, Deputy Editor.

Hand-picked for you, read the latest natural products’ related articles published in our sister journals OBC and MedChemComm…

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

Also of interest: Have you read the Natural Products themed issue of 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!

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Natural Product Updates: now structure-searchable in ChemSpider

22 Oct 2012

By Marie Cote, Deputy Editor.

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

11 Oct 2012

By Marie Cote, Deputy Editor.

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?

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Natural Products in OBC: our latest selection

02 Oct 2012

By Marie Cote, Deputy Editor.

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

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

Also of interest: Have you read the Natural Products themed issue from MedChemComm?

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Welcome to the Structural Aspects of Biosynthesis themed issue!

14 Sep 2012

By Marie Cote, Deputy Editor.

Welcome to NPR issue 10, 2012

As an NPR reader, you will surely have noticed the numerous and exciting structural biosynthesis related articles that have appeared in the journal recently…

Well, now is time to unveil the full themed issue entitled ‘Structural Aspects of Biosynthesis‘ , where you will find all of these articles grouped together for an intellectual feast.

Guest edited by Profs Sheryl Tsai (UC Irvine, USA), Bradley Moore (UC San Diego, USA) and Sarah O’Connor (John Innes Center, UK), read their Editorial for an introduction to the issue.

Featuring 11 Reviews by leaders in their fields, the issue covers:

Polyketide synthases
Non-ribosomal peptide synthetases
Plant natural product biosynthesis
Structural progress of bacterial enzymes in biosynthesis
P450 enzymes for natural product modification, towards metabolic engineering

Janet L. Smith et al. (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) have designed the artwork featuring on the cover of the issue, illustrating their review on the structural biology of marine polyketide synthases. The cover article will be FREE to access for a period of 6 weeks:

Insights from the sea: Structural biology of marine polyketide synthases
David L. Akey, Jennifer J. Gehret, Dheeraj Khare and Janet L. Smith
Nat. Prod. Rep., 2012, 29, 1038-1049
DOI: 10.1039/C2NP20016C

We hope you enjoy the issue!

Let us know what you think by leaving a comment below.

Also, why not view our previous thematic collections? Access all NPR themed issues here.

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7800 new natural product compounds in ChemSpider

30 Aug 2012

By Marie Cote, Deputy Editor.

Do you know about Natural Product Updates?

Natural Product Updates (NPU) gives you the molecules involved in key developments in natural product chemistry. Thanks to our work in interpreting what chemists mean, not just what chemists draw, ChemSpider now links to NPU’s data for 13800 natural products since 2005, of which 7800 are brand new to ChemSpider.

Where ChemSpider has information on a compound in NPU you will see the image above, as in, for example, calothrixin B. This is a link to NPU page on the RSC Publishing Platform.

Soon we’ll be integrating more of our graphical databases into ChemSpider. Watch this space!

Want to know more about ChemSpider?

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Directing Bioysynthesis III – deadline approaching

28 Aug 2012

By Marie Cote, Deputy Editor.

It’s your last chance to register for Directing Biosynthesis III – by the deadline date of Friday 31 August.

Natural products continue to underpin the developments of new medicines and agrochemicals. Their biosynthesis and role in the environment are increasingly well understood at ecological, chemical, biochemical, and genetic levels and their discovery and exploitation remain key objectives of academics and companies. Significant opportunities exist for engineering biosynthetic pathways in bacteria, fungi and plants for the directed biosynthesis of new natural products with new and beneficial properties.

We are delighted to announce that a special symposium will take place within the Directing Biosynthesis III programme, recognising the achievements of three RSC award winners of 2011. Each of the winners will give a keynote lecture within the symposium:

Professor Jim Naismith, University of St Andrews, UK
Member of Collaborative Computational Project 4 – STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (CCP4)
Winners of the Rita and John Cornforth Award 2011

Professor Chris Schofield, University of Oxford, UK
Winner of the Jeremy Knowles Award 2011

Dr David R Spring, University of Cambridge, UK
Winner of the Norman Heatley Award 2011

So join them to be a part of this highly topical conference featuring contributions from the most active groups in the UK, Europe, the USA and Japan working in the rapidly developing area of directed biosynthesis of new natural products.

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Natural Products Blog

Biosynthesis, pharmacology, organic synthesis and more: the pick of 2012’s Natural Product Reports articles

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

Natural Products in OBC – access our latest selection

Natural Product Updates: now structure-searchable in ChemSpider

Natural Product Updates

Browse this Database

Plant defense mechanisms on the cover of NPR Issue 11

Natural Products in OBC: our latest selection

Top ten most accessed articles in July 2012

Welcome to the Structural Aspects of Biosynthesis themed issue!

7800 new natural product compounds in ChemSpider

Directing Bioysynthesis III – deadline approaching

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