About the Book

Chemistry of Natural Products

Natural products, including plants, animals and minerals have been the basis of treatment of human diseases and have been exploited for human use for thousands of years. During the last few decades, research into natural products has advanced tremendously thanks to contributions from the fields of chemistry, life sciences, food science and material sciences. Comparisons of natural products from microorganisms, lower eukaryotes, animals, higher plants and marine organisms are now well documented. A natural product is a chemical compound or substance produced by a living organism – found in nature that usually has a pharmacological or biological activity for use in pharmaceutical drug discovery and drug design. A natural product can be considered as such even if it can be prepared by total synthesis. Carbohydrates are naturally occuring polyhydroxyaldehydes or polyhydroxyketones, or they are compounds that react with water to give these compounds. They include sugars, starches, cellulose, and similar substances. The book takes look at the general introduction, nomenclature, occurrence, isolation, detection, structure elucidation by various techniques, biotechniques and bioactivities, all done with an attempts to understand the therapeutic and medicinal properties of these products. CONTENTS : (1)Nature of Organic Chemistry (2)Alkaloids (3)Carbohydrates (4)Lipids (5)Proteins (6)Amino Acids (7)Aromatic Compounds (8)Nucleic Acids (9)Terpenoids (10)Steroids.