Natural products (a.k.a. secondary metabolites) are produced by living organisms that are not essential for their growth, development, or reproduction, but may play a role in their survival or adaptability in nature. Many secondary metabolites isolated from plants and microbes have found use as molecular probes, drug leads, or medicine...
Hop (Humulus lupulus L. var. lupulus) is a diploid, dioecious plant with an extensive history of cultivation and use in brewing, as a textile, and for its therapeutic properties. Hop is prized for its ability to produce a variety of aromatic and flavor compounds, as well as compounds with anti-microbial...
Pseudomonas fluorescens NZI7 was first isolated from a New Zealand mushroom farm in 2001. This Gram-negative bacteria can cause brown blotch disease in the basidiomycete mushroom Agaricus bisporus. P. fluorescens NZI7 can also repel grazing by the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, a natural predator of P. fluorescens NZI7. Potentially implicated in...
Wine taste and mouthfeel are essential factors that determine consumer acceptance, consumer preference, and wine quality. The three taste descriptors, sweet, sour, and bitter, are well understood and routinely appearing in wine sensory. In contrast, information related to mouthfeel sensations is still relatively limited. Winemakers have worked hard to craft...
Ribomimetic natural products have long been known for their important biological activities. Structurally, they contain a densely functionalized cyclopentane unit that resembles ribose. Pactamycin, the prominent member of this class of natural products, is a potent protein synthesis inhibitor produced by the soil bacterium Streptomyces pactum. In pactamycin, the aminocyclopentitol...
Superwarfarins are anticoagulant rodenticides that are 100 times more potent and 15 times more persistent than warfarin. They have been used since the 1980s and cause over 10,000 cases of accidental and intentional poisonings per year. Apart from inducing uncontrollable bleeding, by inhibiting the vitamin K cycle, superwarfarins can disrupt...
Dearomatization reactions exist broadly in biosynthesis and chemical synthesis. The highly functionalized atoms of arenes can be masked by it aromaticity, and upon dearomatization, those reactive atoms can be readily applied to bond formation and further manipulation. The total synthesis of (–)-cephalotaxine and (–)- homoharringtonine is described via an oxidative...
Marine natural products possess an abundance of diverse chemical scaffolds with unique biological activities. By targeting unusual or unique microbial environments within varying marine ecologies we can continue to discover novel chemistry with potentially new molecular targets. The research presented here is focused on exploring unusual chemical ecologies and the...
The furanyl diterpenoid family of natural products has drawn the attention of both synthetic organic chemists and pharmacologists due to their complex structural architectures and diverse biological activity. Among them, wortmannin has been most extensively studied for biological activities. All these furanyl diterpenoids consist of a highly strained naptha[1,8-bc]furan core,...
Sunscreen products are used worldwide to protect the skin from ultraviolet radiation. However, some of the ingredients used in sunscreen products are fatal to coral reefs especially in areas where tourism is a large part of the economy. In this study, we explored a synthetic route to produce 4-deoxygadusol, which...