Advances in Analytical Chemistry: Unlocking the Potential of Natural Products
A special issue of Molecules (ISSN 1420-3049). This special issue belongs to the section "Analytical Chemistry".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 November 2026 | Viewed by 221
Editors
Interests: chemical characterization of foods and food-related matrices; natural products; food bioactive components; food contaminants; authenticity and typicality of foods; food chemistry; analytical chemistry
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: development of miniaturization extraction techniques with application in food analysis; food bioactive and secondary metabolites; food molecular markers; food authenticity
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Natural products remain one of the most important sources of bioactive compounds for various applications in the field of pharmaceuticals, functional foods, flavors, cosmetics, and agrochemicals. However, the complexity of natural matrices in terms of their chemical composition and the generally low content of biologically active compounds make analysis of these materials difficult. Therefore, the development of powerful analytical approaches is critical to the identification, quantification, and quality control of natural products and natural product-based products.
Analytical chemistry is the main tool that can help overcome the difficulties associated with the analysis of natural products, as it allows the comprehensive chemical characterization, authenticity verification, impurity identification, and bioactive component analysis of foods and related products. Advances in separation science, mass spectrometry, spectroscopy, and sample preparation have helped to improve the performance of analytical tools while meeting the requirements of sustainability, efficiency, and reliability.
This Special Issue will emphasize state-of-the-art analytical approaches and methodological developments in natural products analysis, which include, but are not limited to, high resolution liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry (HR-LC-MS), gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS), supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, and hyphenated and multidimensional approaches. Special emphasis will be placed on green sample preparation techniques, such as micro-solid phase extraction (µ-SPE), QuEChERS, dispersive liquid–liquid microextraction (DLLME), green solvents, as well as novel paper-based and sensor-based analytical approaches.
Manuscripts examining food chemistry, food bioactive components, natural product profiling, food contaminants, authenticity/typicality assessment, foodomics, chemometrics, quality control approaches, etc., are especially encouraged. Additionally, those reporting methodological developments with enhanced sensitivity, selectivity, throughput, robustness, and green approaches, as well as applications with emphasis on the analytical characterization of complex natural matrices, are welcome.
Natural products have long been a main source of new drugs, flavors, and agrochemicals. However, crude extracts are complex, and active compounds are often present at low levels. Analytical chemistry is the key to finding, identifying, and quantifying these molecules, and to controlling the quality of the final products.
Typical techniques of interest include high-resolution LC-MS, GC-MS, supercritical-fluid chromatography, trapped-ion MS, NMR, miniaturized sample prep (micro-SPE, QuEChERS, DLLME), green solvents, and paper-based sensors, among others.
This Special Issue, titled “Advances in Analytical Chemistry: Unlocking the Potential of Natural Products”, will gather new methods and improvements that make this area of science faster, greener, and more reliable. Submissions of original research articles, communications, perspectives, and comprehensive review articles are welcome.
Dr. José Sousa Câmara
Dr. Rosa Perestrelo
Guest Editors
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-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Molecules is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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 2700 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.
Keywords
- natural products
- isolation techniques
- quality control
- spectroscopy
- chromatography
- analytical methods
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