Natural Products Chemistry

The Natural Products Chemistry Section of the journal Molecules publishes original research and timely review articles on all aspects of natural product chemistry. The Section aims to increase our knowledge on the isolation, analytical characterization, chemical structure, biological activity, biosynthesis and the use of natural products for human benefit.

In particular (but not exclusively), this Section invites contributions that report on:

• Isolation and structure elucidation of new natural products
• Analytical characterization of natural products using state-of-the art methods
• Methods for quality control of herbal and other natural medicinal preparations or foodstuff
• Biological activity (pharmacology and toxicology) of natural products including in vitro and in vivo pharmacodynamics, pharmacokinetics
• Structure–activity studies of natural products and analogues
• Ethnomedicinal and ethnopharmacological studies with clear relation to the chemical constituents of the investigated material
• Studies on the biosynthesis of natural products
• Total or semi-synthesis of natural products and analogues
• Studies on chemical ecology and related aspects

As a section of a chemical journal, all presented work must be clearly related to chemical knowledge, i.e., work on extracts or herbal preparations without characterization of chemical constituents will not be considered.

Manuscripts that mainly describe computational studies need to be accompanied by experimental validation. For QSAR or molecular docking modeling, a sufficient number of new compounds should be included and discussed. Molecular docking or other modeling methods that lead to predictions of bioactivity or other properties of interest must be accompanied by experimental data that demonstrate the reasonableness of the computation. As with chemical and biological methods, authors should present sufficient information to allow computational methods to be reproduced and tested in other laboratories.