Date: Nov. 14, 2023

Source: College of Pharmacy

Author: Hu Lijun

Translator: Liu Na

The team of Profs. Ye Wengcai and Wang Ying has published its research on the synthesis of natural products in Angewandte Chemie International Edition (DOI: 10.1002/anie.202312568).

The team found that the correct identification and effective combination of biogenetic building are key to the successful biomimetic synthesis of natural products. It also proposed the first synthesis strategy based on biogenetic building blocks and applied it to the biomimetic synthesis of natural products with complex structures. 

The synthesis of natural products includes chemical synthesis and biosynthesis. Chemical synthesis is based mainly on the inverse synthesis analysis strategy to carry out reasonable deconstruction of target molecules to guide the design of total synthesis of complex natural products. Biosynthesis is the complete synthesis of natural products in homologous or heterologous microbial cells through the reconstruction of material/energy metabolism and its regulatory pathways. Whether it is chemical synthesis or biosynthesis, there are still many challenges to achieve efficient and large-scale preparation of complex natural products. How to learn from or simulate organisms to synthesize natural products efficiently has been a hot topic for organic chemists and synthetic biologists.

（Screenshot of the paper）