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

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Horticulturae is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• metabolomics
• structural identification
• unknown metabolites
• pharmacognosy
• metabolic markers
• biosynthesis
• biological activity
• bioassay-guided fractionation