A conservative projection shows the world's population growing by 32% (to 9.5 billion) by 2050 and 53% (to 11 billion) by 2100 compared with its current level of 7.2 billion. Because most arable land worldwide is already in use, and water and energy also are limiting, increased production of food will require a substantial increase in efficiency. In this article, we highlight the importance of ...

Structure revision of the recently characterized natural products, decurrensides A-E, is described. The revision is aided by fast and accurate computations of proton spin-spin coupling constants. While the (13)C chemical shifts calculations could reveal the misassignment of the original structures, the calculated spin coupling constants possess much higher structural information content, inform...

The first total synthesis of acetylhomoagmatine, a natural product isolated form the methanolic extracts from the sponge Cliona celata, is performed in four steps in a very high yield.

Synthetic investigations towards the structurally complex and highly decorated framework of B-seco limonoid natural products by means of a [3,3]-sigmatropic rearrangement are described. Detailed model studies reveal, that an Ireland-Claisen rearrangement can be employed to construct the central C9-C10 bond thereby giving access to the B-seco limonoid scaffold. However, application of the develo...

Glycoglycerolipids occur widely in natural products, especially in the marine species. Glycoglycerolipids have been shown to possess a variety of bioactivities. This paper will review the different methodologies and strategies for the synthesis of biological glycoglycerolipids and their analogs for bioactivity assay. In addition, the bioactivities and structure-activity relationship of the glyc...

Discovering new carbon building blocks is very significant to advance transition-metal-catalyzed cycloadditions for the synthesis of various-sized ring compounds. A new seven-carbon building block from buta-1,3-dienylcyclopropanes (BDCPs) has been developed, showing that, under the catalysis of [Rh(CO)(2)Cl](2), BDCPs react with CO to give [7 + 1] cycloaddition products, cyclooctadienones. The ...