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Special Issue: Redox Active Natural Products and Their Interaction with Cellular Signalling Pathways

During the last decade, research into natural products has experienced a certain renaissance. The urgent need for more and more effective antibiotics in medicine, the demand for ecologically friendly plant protectants in agriculture, “natural” cosmetics and the issue of a sustainable and healthy nut...

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Autor principal: Jacob, Claus
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6271017/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25432010
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/molecules191219588
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author Jacob, Claus
author_facet Jacob, Claus
author_sort Jacob, Claus
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description During the last decade, research into natural products has experienced a certain renaissance. The urgent need for more and more effective antibiotics in medicine, the demand for ecologically friendly plant protectants in agriculture, “natural” cosmetics and the issue of a sustainable and healthy nutrition in an ageing society have fuelled research into Nature’s treasure chest of “green gold”. Here, redox active secondary metabolites from plants, fungi, bacteria and other (micro-)organisms often have been at the forefront of the most interesting developments. These agents provide powerful means to interfere with many, probably most cellular signaling pathways in humans, animals and lower organisms, and therefore can be used to protect, i.e., in form of antioxidants, and to frighten off or even kill, i.e., in form of repellants, antibiotics, fungicides and selective, often catalytic “sensor/effector” anticancer agents. Interestingly, whilst natural product research dates back many decades, in some cases even centuries, and compounds such as allicin and various flavonoids have been investigated thoroughly in the past, it has only recently become possible to investigate their precise interactions and mode(s) of action inside living cells. Here, fluorescent staining and labelling on the one side, and appropriate detection, either qualitatively under the microscope or quantitatively in flow cytometers and plate readers, on the other, enable researchers to obtain the various pieces of information necessary to construct a fairly complete puzzle of how such compounds act and interact in living cells. Complemented by the more traditional activity assays and Western Blots, and increasingly joined by techniques such as proteomics, chemogenetic screening and mRNA profiling, these cell based bioanalytical techniques form a powerful platform for “intracellular diagnostics”. In the case of redox active compounds, especially of Reactive Sulfur Species (RSS), such techniques have recently unraveled concepts such as the “cellular thiolstat”, yet considerably more research is required in order to gain a full understanding of why and how such compounds act—often selectively—in different organisms.
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spelling pubmed-62710172018-12-28 Special Issue: Redox Active Natural Products and Their Interaction with Cellular Signalling Pathways Jacob, Claus Molecules Editorial During the last decade, research into natural products has experienced a certain renaissance. The urgent need for more and more effective antibiotics in medicine, the demand for ecologically friendly plant protectants in agriculture, “natural” cosmetics and the issue of a sustainable and healthy nutrition in an ageing society have fuelled research into Nature’s treasure chest of “green gold”. Here, redox active secondary metabolites from plants, fungi, bacteria and other (micro-)organisms often have been at the forefront of the most interesting developments. These agents provide powerful means to interfere with many, probably most cellular signaling pathways in humans, animals and lower organisms, and therefore can be used to protect, i.e., in form of antioxidants, and to frighten off or even kill, i.e., in form of repellants, antibiotics, fungicides and selective, often catalytic “sensor/effector” anticancer agents. Interestingly, whilst natural product research dates back many decades, in some cases even centuries, and compounds such as allicin and various flavonoids have been investigated thoroughly in the past, it has only recently become possible to investigate their precise interactions and mode(s) of action inside living cells. Here, fluorescent staining and labelling on the one side, and appropriate detection, either qualitatively under the microscope or quantitatively in flow cytometers and plate readers, on the other, enable researchers to obtain the various pieces of information necessary to construct a fairly complete puzzle of how such compounds act and interact in living cells. Complemented by the more traditional activity assays and Western Blots, and increasingly joined by techniques such as proteomics, chemogenetic screening and mRNA profiling, these cell based bioanalytical techniques form a powerful platform for “intracellular diagnostics”. In the case of redox active compounds, especially of Reactive Sulfur Species (RSS), such techniques have recently unraveled concepts such as the “cellular thiolstat”, yet considerably more research is required in order to gain a full understanding of why and how such compounds act—often selectively—in different organisms. MDPI 2014-11-26 /pmc/articles/PMC6271017/ /pubmed/25432010 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/molecules191219588 Text en © 2014 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Editorial
Jacob, Claus
Special Issue: Redox Active Natural Products and Their Interaction with Cellular Signalling Pathways
title Special Issue: Redox Active Natural Products and Their Interaction with Cellular Signalling Pathways
title_full Special Issue: Redox Active Natural Products and Their Interaction with Cellular Signalling Pathways
title_fullStr Special Issue: Redox Active Natural Products and Their Interaction with Cellular Signalling Pathways
title_full_unstemmed Special Issue: Redox Active Natural Products and Their Interaction with Cellular Signalling Pathways
title_short Special Issue: Redox Active Natural Products and Their Interaction with Cellular Signalling Pathways
title_sort special issue: redox active natural products and their interaction with cellular signalling pathways
topic Editorial
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6271017/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25432010
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/molecules191219588
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