Bioactive Substances, Pharmacognosy and Metabolomics

Dear Colleagues,

Plants contain thousands of metabolites that vary greatly among species. Despite the massive development of metabolomics, the vast majority of metabolites remain structurally unknown, with great potential for further research. In the current state of the art, it is not possible to perform large-scale structural identification of compounds in complex matrices. Therefore, procedures relying on compound isolation and/or chemical synthesis are usually necessary when identifying an unknown compound. As an example, bioassay-guided fractionation is a traditional approach for isolation and identification of active compounds. In addition, current metabolomic methods, e.g., LC-MS, allow preliminary annotation of hundreds of metabolites in plant extracts based on recorded mass spectra. Such information can further be used for synthesis of proposed compounds, structure confirmation and biochemical characterization. 

This collection covers all aspects of the discovery of unknown plant metabolites, including their preliminary annotation, identification of chemical structure, function and biological activity related to either human or plant physiology. The assignment of biological activity or physiological function to known metabolites is also covered by this collection. The studied horticultural crops are fruits, vegetables, medicinal, aromatic and ornamental plants; however, model plants, such as Arabidopsis, can be included to support the proposed hypothesis. The applied methods may include, but are not limited to, the following: non-targeted or targeted metabolomic approaches, cellular assays, phenotypic analysis and/or biochemical methods.

Dr. Jiri Gruz
Collection Editor

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