Natural product libraries spectra

Classical natural products chemistry involved the isolation and purification of major natural product compounds from specific representatives of flora or fauna for structure determination. The terpenoids are the compounds of interest in this chapter and their initial structure elucidations were carried out in the 1930s—1970s. There are numerous compilations and encyclopaedia on terpenoids listing the physicochemical properties and literature background of the pure natural products. Many of the mass spectra of the underivatized terpenoid compounds are in the standard mass spectrum libraries of modern computerized data systems. 

Natural products have played a major role in the field of antibiotics. Most of their impact has resulted directly from the natural product itself or from single-compound analog synthesis. However, the use of natural-product-template-driven library approaches has the potential to identify novel agents with a new spectrum of activity. The identification of novel antibiotics from the natural products moenomycin and anisomycin demonstrates the viability of the natural product template strategy. These examples also highlight some of the strategies and challenges associated with this approach. 

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