Natural Product Reports最新文献

Covering: up to 2025Invertebrates, as the majority of macroscopic species on the Earth, are important resources for natural products. Chemical investigations of animals can date back to the early 20th century and have led to the discovery of thousands of compounds with diverse biological functions. These natural products can be structurally classified as terpenoids, polyketides, and alkaloids. Additionally, many compounds have been isolated from symbionts, leading to the widespread belief that animals lack the capability for secondary metabolism. Recent biochemical studies challenge this notion, revealing great potential for animal biosynthesis research. Animals possess larger genomes and more complex metabolic pathways, suggesting untapped biosynthetic potential. In contrast to microorganisms, studies on the biosynthesis of natural products in animals remain limited. Characterized genes represent only a small fraction of their vast genomes. The discovery of biosynthetic gene clusters suggests that the methods used to mine the biosynthetic genes of microorganisms may also be applicable to animals. The characterization of 4-vinylanisole in locusts demonstrates that the pathways lacking clear core biosynthesis enzymes still require multidisciplinary experimental approaches. In summary, further biosynthesis studies will expand methodological approaches and accelerate the characterization of remaining natural product pathways.

Covering: 1975 up to September 2025Nudibranchs have attracted significant interest from natural product researchers due to their intriguing predator-prey interactions and numerous bioactive metabolites. The review below, covering 1975 up to September 2025, focuses on the chemoecological interactions reported between predator and prey within the order Nudibranchia. The emphasis is on the ingestion, sequestration and biotransformation of diet-derived compounds, and when known, the role, localisation and bioactivities of the metabolites are described. The review is arranged by class of compounds sequestered or ingested (alkaloids, terpenoids, macrolides, nucleosides and lipids) for each invertebrate prey (sponges, bryozoans and cnidarians).

Covering literature to September 2025This review provides a comprehensive account of the 217 natural product inspired antibiotics that have been approved for human use from 1943 through to September 2025, inclusive of 52 (24%) that are natural products (NPs) and 165 (76%) that are semi-synthetic or synthetic derivatives of natural products (NP-Ds). These are organized into sixteen categories defined by shared structural motifs and, in many cases, common mechanisms of action. Each antibiotic is classified as either a NP or NP-D, annotated by a molecular structure that, where relevant, highlights the relationships between NPs and NP-Ds. Market details are also provided, including the company that brought each antibiotic to market, the year and country of first approval, the spectrum of usage across pathogen classes, routes of administration, current status, and selected commentary on mechanisms of action. The assembled dataset is further analysed through a series of charts that illustrate insightful trends that document the remarkable history and lasting impact of NP inspired antibiotics. The review concludes with observations on the historic impact and future prospects of natural products as a source of inspiration for the development of new generations of antibiotics.

Covering up to 2025Plant products, including botanical dietary supplements, nutraceuticals, and herbal medicines, remain central to supporting human health and wellness. Their usage has been steadily increasing over the last few decades, which has also led to raised concerns about proper identification and characterization of plant materials. This information is crucial to evaluate the safety and efficacy of these botanical products and prevent misidentification or adulteration. While there are multiple analytical approaches to characterize botanicals, this review provides insight into how untargeted mass spectrometry metabolomics can profile these commonly complex mixtures and provide detailed datasets that are capable of taxonomically classifying samples, detecting adulteration, and providing insight into variation between plant materials and their nutritional, medicinal, or toxicological effects. We describe data analysis approaches for untargeted metabolomics, case studies on the various applications of this method for characterizing botanicals, and challenges that the growing field of mass spectrometry-based metabolomics is facing. The chosen topics reflect the current state of metabolomics analyses for complex systems with a look to the future of how to conceptualize botanical characterization.

A personal selection of 32 recent papers is presented covering various aspects of current developments in bioorganic chemistry and novel natural products such as humulupone A from Humulus lupulus.

Covering: 2020 to 2025Natural products are a major source of bioactive compounds, yet elucidating their biosynthetic pathways remains a major challenge due to complex genotype-phenotype relationships. Recent advances in computational approaches, particularly artificial intelligence (AI) and mechanistic modeling, are transforming this field. This highlight examines key databases that underpin computational studies, AI-driven methods for predicting biosynthetic pathways and enzyme-substrate interactions, and mechanistic simulations that provide energetic and structural insights. We also discuss current challenges and future opportunities for integrating these strategies to accelerate discovery, engineering, and application of natural products in drug discovery, biotechnology, and synthetic biology.

Halogenated organic compounds (HOCs) are essential building blocks in pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, and advanced materials. However, their conventional chemical synthesis often relies on hazardous reagents and generates significant environmental waste. Harnessing nature's solutions, halogenases and dehalogenases offer selective, eco-friendly alternatives for the biosynthesis and degradation of HOCs. Halogenases, including electrophilic (e.g., haloperoxidases, flavin-dependent), radical (α-ketoglutarate-dependent), and nucleophilic (S-adenosylmethionine (SAM)-dependent) types, facilitate precise C-X bond formation under mild conditions. Recent advances in protein engineering, such as the modification of tryptophan halogenases and fluorinases, have greatly expanded the repertoire and efficiency of biocatalytic halogenation, enabling the production of new-to-nature compounds for synthetic biology applications. In parallel, dehalogenases, ranging from reductive to hydrolytic and oxidative enzymes, play crucial roles in removing halogens from persistent pollutants, thereby supporting effective bioremediation and environmental detoxification. This review summarizes recent progress in enzyme discovery, mechanistic elucidation, protein engineering, and applied synthetic biology, with a focus on the integration of halogenases and dehalogenases into scalable platforms for both biosynthetic and remediation. Continued research aimed at improving enzyme stability, substrate scope, and operational robustness will be critical to fully realizing the industrial and environmental potential of these versatile biocatalysts.

Covering: 1982 to 2025The therapeutic value of natural products (NPs) is well established, as evidenced by their rich ethnopharmacological history and the significant proportion of marketed drugs derived from natural sources. Despite their notable advantages such as structural versatility and scaffold diversity, NPs have been increasingly sidelined by the pharmaceutical industry due to the labor-intensive nature of their isolation and structural elucidation as well as issues related to patenting, sustainable sourcing and preclinical evaluation. Moreover, current bioavailability research focuses predominantly on well-known medicinal and edible plants or specific compound classes, leaving many other promising candidates underexplored. The interplay between the gut microbiota and NPs, which is critical for pharmacokinetics and ADME (absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion), is also overlooked. Numerous in vitro and in vivo models have been developed to study the ADME properties of xenobiotics, while human clinical trials remain scarce in the field of NPs. Recent technological advancements, including innovations in mass spectrometry (MS), smart library screening, dereplication, molecular networking, and metabolomics, have significantly improved the NP research pipeline, offering faster and more accurate compound identification. High-resolution instruments like Orbitrap, QTOF, FT-ICR, and MRMS, alongside IMS and advanced data acquisition techniques (DDA and DIA), now offer deeper insights into complex mixtures. Despite MS being a cornerstone of pharmacokinetics-pharmacodynamics (PK/PD) studies, the integration of metabolomics and big data analytics remains underutilized, particularly in NP prioritization. This review aims to explore the evolution of MS in NP metabolism studies, from early investigations to current multidisciplinary approaches, proposing a critical reflection on the challenges in NP drug development.

Covering: 2014/2015 up to 2025.The global rise of antimicrobial resistance imposes a strong demand to develop new antibacterial drugs, and microbes have been a prime source for their discovery. Albicidins and cystobactamids, isolated from xanthomonadaceae and myxococcaceae, respectively, span a novel class of oligoarylamide antibiotics with a unique chemical scaffold featured by para-aminobenzoic acid building blocks. Both compounds exhibit broad spectrum and potent activity against Gram-positive and Gram-negative pathogens through inhibiting DNA gyrase and topoisomerase IV. This article summarizes the insights gained on this class since its initial disclosure in 2014/2015 up to 2025. It discusses natural derivatives, their biosynthesis and chemical synthesis, the unique binding mode to DNA gyrase, and systematic medicinal chemistry programs with >700 analogs that led to resistance-breaking antibiotics with in vivo efficacy. The review illustrates the importance of natural product research to address the global need for new antibiotics.

Correction for ‘Unpacking policy developments in marine natural product research: a scientist's guide to DSI and BBNJ’ by Federica Casolari et al., Nat. Prod. Rep., 2025, 42, 1063–1070, https://doi.org/10.1039/D4NP00070F.