Natural Products General

The best information source on the names of natural products is the Dictionary of Natural Products (DNP), which is part of the Chapman Hall/CRC chemical database (see Section 1.2.1). DNP does not give CAS names where these are lengthy, but it does have extensive coverage of CAS numbers, from which the current CAS name can be readily obtained if needed. 

Four different types of names can be applied to natural products  

Systematic names. Example Methyl 6 -ethyl l,2,2 3,6 7, 8 8 -octahydro-a-(methoxy-methylene)-2-oxospiro[3//-indole-3,l (5 //-indolizine)]7 -acetate, (aE,l S,6 S,TS,S aS)- is the 

Organic Chemist s Desk Reference, Second Edition 

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Toxins and other natural products generally provide great benefit to society. For example, some of the most widely used drugs and therapeutics like streptomycin, the aminoglycoside antibiotic from soil bacteria, and acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin), the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory from willow tree bark, are used by millions of people everyday to improve health and well-being. On the other hand, adverse encounters with toxins like fish and shellfish toxins, plant, and insect toxins do result in harm to humans. 

Separation of extremely complex mixtures of radiolabeled metabolites in natural products generally requires the use of more than one chromatographic step. The sequence in which the steps are carried out is furthermore crucial to a satisfactory result, and is itself dependent upon the initial prechromatographic separations (7j. We might, for example, expect that our initial biological system had been extracted to give three fractions, any or all of which might contain radioactivity non-polar (hexane-soluble), moderately polar (ethyl acetate-soluble), and very polar (alcohol/water soluble). 

Since marine natural products generally occur as a family of closely related structures it is likely that, at least in certain cases, the biosynthetic enzymes are relatively nonspecific. This may only be true for a limited number of cases, however, this result does suggest potential payoffs for the chemoenzymatic synthesis of both known and novel analogues of marine metabolites. 

Synthetic organic chemistry has provided countless powerful and elegant strategies for the construction of complex natural products. Generally, the reactions used for this purpose arise from the systematic optimization of reaction parameters, such as solvent, temperature, concentration, and protecting groups, until the desired reactivity and selectivity are achieved. In sharp contrast, reactions for biomolecule modification cannot be developed with this flexibility because they must be carried out under a narrow set of conditions to maintain the properly folded structure of the protein substrates. Ideally, they should proceed in aqueous solution within a pH range of 6-8,... 

Malone, M.H., The pharmacological evaluation of natural products — general and specific approaches to screening ethnopharmaceuticals, J Ethnopharmacol, 1983 Aug 8(2) 127-147. 

Other organisms. Recent studies have also established that approximately 40% of the chemical structures identified in natural products are not represented by synthetic compounds. Moreover, compounds derived from natural products generally have druglike properties, in that they are relatively small and can be absorbed and metabolized. 

Natural products. General term for substances from animals, plants, or microorganisms, generally arising from their secondary metabolism but also in the wider sense from the primary metabolism. The primary substances are ubiquitous in nature, the occurrence of secondary substances is mostly limited to specific oigan-isms. The classification into primary and secondary natural products was introduced by the physiologist A. Kessel. 

This chapter presents method of extraction/isolation and analysis of carotenoids in natural products. General procedures of solvent extraction/isolation and analysis of carotenoids are described. Preparation and determination of carotenoids are also explained. ... 

Group contribution models allow the prediction of the phase behaviour of compounds not included in the parameterization procedure. Moreover, the current interest in using renewable products as feedstock to the chemical industry has also made the use of group contribution models appealing, because natural products generally contain a large number of similar species that can be represented by a limited small number of functional groups. 

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