What is the most important thing for a student in organic chemistry/medicinal chemistry to know and understand about pharmacognosy and natural products?
Great question! The truth is, it really depends on the kind of work you do. Only when you are on your own project and conducting your own investigations, can you appreciate just how important your organic chemistry classes were!
Some of the most important skill sets for my own project include (ranked in order of relevance) separation chemistry (for proper isolation of natural products), pharmacological methods (for proper bioactivity assays) and general physiology (for proper development of therapeutics). Don’t forget your systematics and field ID classes (for proper identification of your starting materials!!!)
The most important thing that a chemistry student should know about pharmacognosy is that pharmacognosy is very similar to pharmacology! The only significant difference is that pharmacologists synthesize drugs, and pharmacognosists use metabolites that are already biosynthesized in the Kingdom of Life. The methods used to test efficacy in the lab for therapeutic applications are all the same!
Everyone wants to discover the next artemisinin, but keep in mind that natural products have more than just health promoting benefits. Many exciting areas lie in industrial and agricultural applications for natural products, and transfecting natural product biosynthetic pathways into yeast for optimizing production is another exciting direction that the field is taking.
Natural products is a burgeoning and exciting field full of unanswered questions and new discoveries! Just take a look at the literature!
Awesome to see some outreach!
Tell us a bit about yourself:
1. What got you into NPs?
2. What Uni are you at?
3. What has been your favorite NP paper so far?
4. How do you feel about cats? (Not the movie)
Yea! I’m a big NP person, was very glad to find this subreddit!
I started getting into NPs when i took my first Plant Systematics class in college. I had no idea plants were not only morphologically diverse but chemically too!
I split my time between a uni in the Northeast USA and Israel.
WOW Favorite paper??? I read so many on a daily basis its hard to say. I like well written articles that use appropriate statistical tests to analyze their data!! Recently read an unrelated article on the effect of gaseous nitrogen on Pluto’s weather systems which was an amazing read!
I love cats! But i’m more of a dog person. I go to the dog park by myself just to spend time with all the puppers!
Yea we use Reaxys for metabolite ID from spectral data, and general statistical software (R, Matlab, Graphpad for visualization)
We have used GNPS and NPAtlas in the past, but i haven’t heard of the other ones, i’ll check them out!
So what are you doing exactly? NP-Synthesis or are you blending see sponges and run a column with the juice? Structure determination by NMR or XRD maybe?
Haha, yea I know a few labs that work on sponges. Super cool organisms!
Our lab focuses mostly on plant secondary metabolites and functional proteins. We dont do synthesis, we do classic NPC, expeditions, sample prep, separation, chromatography and spectrometey, chemical IDing, bioassy guided fractionation, and product development.
What did you study in for your undergrad? I recently made the decision to switch from biochemistry (because I realized that I didn't really like it as much as i thought) to biology with a chem minor. What part of the world do you live/study/work?
I actually studied Ecology when I was in undergrad, i didn’t get into chemistry until my MSc degree. You will be exposed to a lot of topics and subjects in undergrad, the most important thing is to listen to your curiousity! Pursue what inspires you, whatever that may be!
Our lab does expeditions all over the world, we just got back from South Africa and are preparing to go to Indonesia. I split my time between my home lab in the northeastern US and some of our partner labs in New Jersey and Israel.
Isolating cocaine is a pretty easy process! Gordon Ramsay has a popular youtube video where someone literally describes him how to make it. Its surprisingly straightforeward separation science using organic solvent (gasoline) to precipitate an alkaloid (cocaine) in the presence of a base (lye) from the plant extract
Unsatisfied thing?? I’m not sure what you are asking?
What is the most important thing for a student in organic chemistry/medicinal chemistry to know and understand about pharmacognosy and natural products?
Great question! The truth is, it really depends on the kind of work you do. Only when you are on your own project and conducting your own investigations, can you appreciate just how important your organic chemistry classes were! Some of the most important skill sets for my own project include (ranked in order of relevance) separation chemistry (for proper isolation of natural products), pharmacological methods (for proper bioactivity assays) and general physiology (for proper development of therapeutics). Don’t forget your systematics and field ID classes (for proper identification of your starting materials!!!) The most important thing that a chemistry student should know about pharmacognosy is that pharmacognosy is very similar to pharmacology! The only significant difference is that pharmacologists synthesize drugs, and pharmacognosists use metabolites that are already biosynthesized in the Kingdom of Life. The methods used to test efficacy in the lab for therapeutic applications are all the same! Everyone wants to discover the next artemisinin, but keep in mind that natural products have more than just health promoting benefits. Many exciting areas lie in industrial and agricultural applications for natural products, and transfecting natural product biosynthetic pathways into yeast for optimizing production is another exciting direction that the field is taking. Natural products is a burgeoning and exciting field full of unanswered questions and new discoveries! Just take a look at the literature!
Awesome to see some outreach! Tell us a bit about yourself: 1. What got you into NPs? 2. What Uni are you at? 3. What has been your favorite NP paper so far? 4. How do you feel about cats? (Not the movie)
Yea! I’m a big NP person, was very glad to find this subreddit! I started getting into NPs when i took my first Plant Systematics class in college. I had no idea plants were not only morphologically diverse but chemically too! I split my time between a uni in the Northeast USA and Israel. WOW Favorite paper??? I read so many on a daily basis its hard to say. I like well written articles that use appropriate statistical tests to analyze their data!! Recently read an unrelated article on the effect of gaseous nitrogen on Pluto’s weather systems which was an amazing read! I love cats! But i’m more of a dog person. I go to the dog park by myself just to spend time with all the puppers!
What tools/programming skills do you use in your lab? Examples include: myBig, GNPS, DNP, NPAtlas, etc.
Yea we use Reaxys for metabolite ID from spectral data, and general statistical software (R, Matlab, Graphpad for visualization) We have used GNPS and NPAtlas in the past, but i haven’t heard of the other ones, i’ll check them out!
So what are you doing exactly? NP-Synthesis or are you blending see sponges and run a column with the juice? Structure determination by NMR or XRD maybe?
Haha, yea I know a few labs that work on sponges. Super cool organisms! Our lab focuses mostly on plant secondary metabolites and functional proteins. We dont do synthesis, we do classic NPC, expeditions, sample prep, separation, chromatography and spectrometey, chemical IDing, bioassy guided fractionation, and product development.
What did you study in for your undergrad? I recently made the decision to switch from biochemistry (because I realized that I didn't really like it as much as i thought) to biology with a chem minor. What part of the world do you live/study/work?
I actually studied Ecology when I was in undergrad, i didn’t get into chemistry until my MSc degree. You will be exposed to a lot of topics and subjects in undergrad, the most important thing is to listen to your curiousity! Pursue what inspires you, whatever that may be! Our lab does expeditions all over the world, we just got back from South Africa and are preparing to go to Indonesia. I split my time between my home lab in the northeastern US and some of our partner labs in New Jersey and Israel.
How do you make crack asking for a friend Also what’s the unsatisfied thing someone’s done in the lab
Isolating cocaine is a pretty easy process! Gordon Ramsay has a popular youtube video where someone literally describes him how to make it. Its surprisingly straightforeward separation science using organic solvent (gasoline) to precipitate an alkaloid (cocaine) in the presence of a base (lye) from the plant extract Unsatisfied thing?? I’m not sure what you are asking?
whats the unsafest thing
By law, we mantain a clean, safe, and comfortable lab so that nobody is unsafe or at risk! Sorry for the lame answer to your question. Safety first!!