Diversity of Alkaloids

Dear Colleagues,

Among plant secondary metabolites, the nitrogen containing alkaloids play a special role. More than 27,000 structures have been identified in more than 20% of seed plants. Many alkaloid producing plants have been known to mankind as toxic plants and were used as arrow poisons or to kill vermin and enemies. Plants use the alkaloids as defense compounds against herbivores, and to a lesser extent against microbes.

Most alkaloids exhibit profound pharmacological properties, such as neurotoxic, mind-altering, cytotoxic, and antimicrobial activities. Therefore, many alkaloids are used in pharmacy and medicine to treat disease and health conditions, among them morphine as a painkiller, galanthamine as an inhibitor of acetylcholine esterase (anti-Alzheimer drug) or vinblastine and paclitaxel (taxol) as anti-cancer drugs.

For this Special Issue we invite manuscripts covering the following aspects of alkaloids and alkaloid producing plants:

• phytochemistry
• structure elucidation by NMR and MS
• structural diversity
• toxicology
• pharmacology
• chemical ecology
• evolution
• occurrence in plant kingdom

Prof. Dr. Michael Wink
Guest Editor

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