Absolute Configurations of 14,15-Hydroxylated Prenylxanthones from a Marine-Derived Aspergillus sp. Fungus by Chiroptical Methods

Determination of the absolute configrations for natural products is one of the most important and challenging tasks, especially when the molecules display high conformational flexibility. In this paper, eight new prenylxanthones, aspergixanthones A-H (1–8), and one known analogue (9), were isolated from the marine-derived fungus Aspergillus sp. ZA-01. The absolute configurations of C-14 and C-15 in 1–8 were difficult to be assigned due to the high conformational flexibility of the chains. To solve this problem, the experimental ECD, ORD, and VCD spectra of 1 were combined for analysis with the corresponding theoretical predictions for its different diastereomers. This study suggested that a concerted application of more than one chiroptical methods could be used as a preferable approach for the stereochemical characterizations of flexible molecules. Compounds 1–9 were evaluated for their cytotoxic and antibacterial activities. Among them, 6 showed cytotoxicity against the A-549 cell line with the IC(50) value of 1.1 μM, and 7 exhibited antibacterial activity against Micrococcus lysodeikticus with the MIC value of 0.78 μg/mL.