Retrospective analysis of natural products provides insights for future discovery trends
Abstract
Natural products research seems to be at a critical juncture in terms of its relevance to modern biological science. We have evaluated this landscape of chemical diversity to ask key questions, including the following. How has the rate of discovery of new natural products progressed over the past 70 y? Has natural product structural novelty changed as a function of time? Has the rate of novel discovery declined in recent years? Does exploring novel taxonomic space afford an advantage in terms of novel compound discovery? Is it possible to estimate how close we are to describing all of the chemical space covered by natural products? And, finally, is there still value in exploring natural products space for novel biologically active natural products?
- Publication:
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Science
- Pub Date:
- May 2017
- DOI:
- 10.1073/pnas.1614680114
- Bibcode:
- 2017PNAS..114.5601P