Configurational and Conformational Studies on the Structures of Marine Natural Products

Dear Colleague,

The determination of the configuration (relative and absolute) and conformation of natural products is essential to understand their biological interactions and is the basis for their procurement through total synthesis. When crystalline products are unavailable, structural elucidations can be highly difficult, especially when the targets do not lend themselves easily to standard 2D NMR techniques. The configurational analysis of complex natural products by NMR spectroscopy is still a challenging task, although isotropic (NOE/ROE as well as homo- and heteronuclear J couplings) and anisotropic (RDCs, RQCs, and RCSA) NMR parameters, as well as DFT-based calculation of NMR parameters, are now available. Despite numerous attempts, to date, there is so far no standard or even automated protocol for the configurational and conformational assignment of natural products or small organic molecules in general. The natural products literature is still filled with structural misassignments, despite enormous advances in NMR spectroscopy. Computer-aided structure elucidation of natural products is improving but far from completion. This is especially true for the solution of configurational problems, which is not an issue in biomolecular NMR dealing with polymers composed of repetitive units of known absolute configurations.

This Special Issue will focus on NMR methods for the identification of the relative configuration and conformation of marine natural products, including a wide variety of NMR parameters and computational methods for their use.

Priv.-Doz. Dr. Matthias Köck
Guest 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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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. Marine Drugs 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 2900 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.