Natural products as sources of pest management agents.
1994
Nakanishi K.
Terrestrial and marine animals, plants, insects, and microorganisms produce numerous secondary metabolites. Some are for self-defense, symbiosis, sexual attraction, or to fulfill a variety of other purposes while some are simply metabolic degradation products. The structures of most such Natural Products are extremely cleverly designed so that not only are the skeletons constructed but even each functional groups are arranged in a manner to exert maximal effect. The design of natural products are very ingenious and "imaginative" and it is impossible for scientists to cope with Nature in terms of designing unprecedented bioactive structures. In the following are summarized some examples taken from our past and present studies; some were left at the stage of isolation and structure determination without further investigations, while more recent studies are being investigated beyond the stage of mere structural elucidation. No doubt a great number of natural products published in the literature and described with no mention of activity or simply listed to be "antibiotic" have to be reinvestigated. However, the most difficult is how to assay them, and this depends a great deal on a better understanding of the mode of bioactivity.
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