Prospecting Natural Diversity

Several new enzymes have been isolated from uncultivated microorganisms using these methods. 

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Volume 2 builds on the outstanding contributions by the authors of Volume 1. Drs. S. C. Taneja and G. N. Qazi provide a unique perspective on the therapeutic action of bioactive molecules in medicinal plants. Their group has several years of experience in prospecting natural products in plants and following up with the isolation, characterization and structure elucidation of natural products. The traditional medicinal systems such as Indian and Chinese and those used by African tribes are treasure houses of traditional wisdom, and with the help of modem scientific methods they will continue to be the basis of development of new therapeutic agents. These authors discuss comprehensively how this knowledge can be coupled with diversity-oriented synthesis to discover new therapeutic agents. 

There are now new rules for biodiversity prospecting regarding the collection of natural products. The 1993 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) established sovereign national rights over biological resources and committed member countries to conserve them, develop them sustainably, and share the benehts resulting from their use. 

During past eras, mass mortalities were followed by a rapid recovery of biodiversity (Courtillot 1996). Now, however, mass mortality is man-made. For the first time the causes of biodiversity-loss are not temporary as in previous catastrophes. The demographic increase and escalation in the utilization of natural resources pose an increasing menace to biodiversity. Therefore, any prospect about natural product diversity in the far future is difficult to make. Views are pessimistic, unless we imagine a world populated by microbes that have survived the catastrophe or have mutated. Microbial life is typically rich in unusual secondary metabolites. 

The existence of a solid itself, the solid surfaces, the phenomena of adsorption and absorption of gases are due to the interactions between different components of a system. The nature of the interaction between the particles of a gas-solid system is quite diverse. It depends on the nature of the solid s atoms and the gas-phase molecules. The theory of particle interactions is studied by quantum chemistry [4,5]. To date, one can consider that the prospective trends in the development of this theory for metals and semiconductors [6,7] and alloys [8] have been formulated. They enable one to describe the thermodynamic characteristics of solids, particularly of phase equilibria, the conditions of stability of systems, and the nature of phase transitions [9,10]. Lately, methods of calculating the interactions of adsorbed particles with a surface and between adsorbed particles have been developing intensively [11-13]. But the practical use of quantum-chemical methods for describing physico-chemical processes is hampered by mathematical difficulties. This makes one employ rougher models of particle interaction - model or empirical potentials. Their choice depends on the problems being considered. 

The symposium on which this book is based represented an effort to examine recent advances in the field with particular emphasis on pharmaceutical applications within the context of basic science and engineering. The chapters in this book are selected from the 33 papers presented at the symposium. Each manuscript was thoroughly reviewed by leading experts in the field, edited for content and style, and revised by the authors as needed. The interdisciplinary nature of controlled-release technology is reflected in the diversity of subject areas presented here. To provide focus and cohesiveness, the chapters have been divided into six general areas. In addition, an overview chapter is included to provide perspectives on the current status and future prospects of the pharmaceutical applications of controlled-release technology. 

The potential of molecular structures to populate structural chemical space is diverse and the challenge is to make new discoveries that add to the accumulated knowledge base. An important milestone was achieved during the assembly of this volume and it involves the registration, in 2008 by Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), of the 40 millionth chemical substance. However, a rather surprising outcome was deduced by a CAS team lead by Lipkus his team analyzed these frameworks and concluded that half of the compounds can be described by only 143 framework shapes . The rigorous study of natural products provides an optimal way to expand such understanding and such a prospect is amply illustrated by the 19 chapters in this volume. 

It is a well-understood fact that marine flora harbors a wide range of biologically active compounds that are reported to have an outstanding prospective in the medicinal, nutraceutical, and cosmeceutical applications. Natural metabolites obtained from marine seaweeds prove to be abundant resources with chemical diversity, and among them, phlorotannins are studied most for fheir biological activities. These phlorotannins (Fig. 10.1) are derived from fannins and are composed of several phloroglucinol units linked to each other in different ways and mostly... 

Blumer-Schuette SE, Kataeva I, Westpheling J, Adams MWW, Kelly RM (2008) Extremely thermophilic microorganisms for biomass conversion status and prospects. Curr Opin Biotechnol 19 210-217 Bode HB, Bethe B, Hofs R, Zeeck A (2002) Big effects from small changes possible way to explore nature s chemical diversity. Chembiochem 3 619-627 Bommarius AS, Blum JK, Abrahamson MJ (2011) Status of protein engineering for biocatalysts how to design an industrially useful biocatalyst. Curr Opin Chem Biol 15 194-200... 

Thus, despite a great diversity of conditions for the oxidative conversion of methane, there are three basic t)2pes of processes and the respective products of oxidative conversion of methane the direct oxidation of methane to methanol (DMTM), CX2M, and partial oxidation to S5mgas (POM). To gain deeper insights into the prospects of the DMTM, let us, at least briefly, consider the potentialities and perspectives of other processes of oxidative conversion of natural gas. 

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