American celastraceae

TABLE III. MACROCYCL1C ALKALOIDS FROM AMERICAN CELASTRACEAE (Wilfordate type)... 

The Tenerife group which is responsible for about 70% of all the research published on the Latin American Celastraceae has concentrated on the isolation and structural characterization of secondary metabolites almost incidentally they have also developed various transformations and partial syntheses to test biogenetic theories in vitro and prove structural correlations by means of chemical transformations [76]. 

THE SYSTEMAT1CS OF THE CELASTRACEAE FAMILY AND THE LATIN AMERICAN GENERA... 

In general, very little has been written about diterpenes from the Latin American Celastra-ceaeas these structures are not often found. Abietriene type diterpenes have been the general rule in the Celastraceae although the chemical study of the minor constituents of Orthosphenia mexicana and Rzedowskia tolantonguensis did enable pimarane type diterpenes to be isolated and chemically characterized [43,45] and the second of these species afforded a series of new diterpenes with an isopimarane skeleton, described for the first time in the Celastraceae. 

Friedo-oleane triterpenes with a hemiacetal 24-hydroxy-3-oxo grouping are exclusive to the Celastraceae and several have been isolated from South American species. It has been proposed that these compounds may be intermediates in the biogenetic pathway to the Celastraceae triterpene quin ones. 

Wilfordin, tryptofordin and celangulin (Fig. 14) are antifeedant compounds obtained from extracts of the Celastraceae species Maytenus rigida [78], Trypterigium wilfordii [79] and Celastrus angulatus [77, 80], respectively, and as some products isolated from South American species have similar structural characteristics, they too have been assayed. 

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