The enormous biodiversity developed by Nature during several billion years of evolution has offered a wealth of chemically diverse compounds that have been preselected to modulate biochemical pathways. As metabolites represent the final downstream products of gene transcription, changes in the metabolome are amplified relative to changes in transcriptome and proteome systems. Hence, their analysis can provide different but complementary information about biological function as compared to transcription or expression profiles. Natural products have been historically a rich source of lead molecules in drug discovery, based on their capability to create unique and diverse chemical structures. However, the high chemo-diversity and wide molar distribution still present challenging problems for their isolation and structural characterization. The modern development of new analytical methodologies allows the natural product chemists to tackle the topic from different viewpoints and with better perspectives than before. In particular, in the field of lipidomics that is generally considered the comprehensive understanding of the influence of all lipids on a biological system with respect to cell signalling, membrane architecture, transcriptional and translational modulation, great advances has primarily been obtained from technological advances in NMR and Mass Spectrometry After a short introduction wherein merits and limits of these “-omics” approaches to the analysis of primary and secondary metabolites will be critically compared with classical natural products chemistry methodologies, the lecture will present the state-of-the-art of the technological platforms required for natural products investigations. Recent results taken from our recent adventures in the lipids world of animal- and plant-like microorganisms (ciliates, dinoflagellates and cyanobacteria) will be also discussed.

Looking at Natural Products: Problems and Opportunities

Guella, Graziano
2013-01-01

Abstract

The enormous biodiversity developed by Nature during several billion years of evolution has offered a wealth of chemically diverse compounds that have been preselected to modulate biochemical pathways. As metabolites represent the final downstream products of gene transcription, changes in the metabolome are amplified relative to changes in transcriptome and proteome systems. Hence, their analysis can provide different but complementary information about biological function as compared to transcription or expression profiles. Natural products have been historically a rich source of lead molecules in drug discovery, based on their capability to create unique and diverse chemical structures. However, the high chemo-diversity and wide molar distribution still present challenging problems for their isolation and structural characterization. The modern development of new analytical methodologies allows the natural product chemists to tackle the topic from different viewpoints and with better perspectives than before. In particular, in the field of lipidomics that is generally considered the comprehensive understanding of the influence of all lipids on a biological system with respect to cell signalling, membrane architecture, transcriptional and translational modulation, great advances has primarily been obtained from technological advances in NMR and Mass Spectrometry After a short introduction wherein merits and limits of these “-omics” approaches to the analysis of primary and secondary metabolites will be critically compared with classical natural products chemistry methodologies, the lecture will present the state-of-the-art of the technological platforms required for natural products investigations. Recent results taken from our recent adventures in the lipids world of animal- and plant-like microorganisms (ciliates, dinoflagellates and cyanobacteria) will be also discussed.
2013
PIn proceeding of: 4ème Journées Scientifiques sur la Valorisation des Bioressources
Tunisia
University Monastir
Guella, Graziano
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11572/98938
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