Book Review pubs.acs.org/jnp
Review of Natural Products Desk Reference would be nice if new classes began on new pages and if a table of contents was provided. However, the wealth of structural backbones makes this manual a good resource. The book concludes with a chapter entitled “Structure and nomenclature of specialized natural products”, which discusses sugars and peptides in detail and has a short section on enzyme naming conventions (EC numbers). The final chapter contains information on hazards including solvents that are typically found in natural products research laboratories. For workplace hazards the descriptors provide reference UK and EU laws and regulations, as well as the UN Globally Harmonized System (UN-GHS). The table of solvents, which presents boiling point, flash point, and flammability hazard, is also an excellent quick reference to have handy in the lab. Overall this reference book will be beneficial to many natural products researchers from the novice to the experienced.
Natural Products Desk Reference. By John Buckingham, Caroline Cooper, and Rupert Purchase. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL. 2016. Hardcover, 235 pp. $103.95. ISBN-13: 9781439873618. Natural Products Desk Reference is a handy companion to the online resource Dictionary of Natural Products that is collated by these same authors. This book also functions as a self-standing reference work that would be of use to novice and experienced natural products chemists alike. The reference is divided into eight chapters that provide information ranging from literature sources (Ch. 1 and 2), nomenclature (Ch. 3 and 7), stereochemistry (Ch. 4), biological sources of natural products (Ch. 5), natural product skeletons (Ch. 6), and chemical hazards found in natural products research (Ch. 8). The book opens up with a list of reference works and resources and helpful links to both paper and online sources with a brief discussion of what information is found in the corresponding resource. In the second chapter is a list of journals that publish primary research on natural products. This chapter contains the current name of the journal as well as past names that the journal has published under and if it was absorbed by another journal (and abbreviations). One minor downside is that you cannot look up an abbreviation to discover the full name of the journal. The real benefit of this book starts in Chapter 3, entitled “Nomenclature”. The authors discuss nomenclature in the context of natural products including how trivial names should be used and interpreted. At the end of the chapter is a nice glossary with common nomenclature terms that can be used for quick reference while reading a paper or book if necessary. Chapter 5 contains a very brief discussion (4 pp.) on stereochemistry descriptors seen in natural product names and provides good practical advice for avoiding common pitfalls in stereochemical conventions, particularly in the terpenoids. Chapter 5 provides brief descriptions of the morphological and biochemical characteristics of organisms as well as a brief description of the types of natural products that have been found from these organisms. There is also a glossary at the end that will be useful if you forget a term. The real meat of the book is present in Chapter 6, where the authors present diagrams of structural backbones and approximate numbers of compounds present in that structural class. These structures are organized by compound class (polyketides, simple aromatic natural products, etc.) and nicely spaced on the pages, making them easy to examine. The authors are clearly presenting this portion of the book to a chemist with experience in natural products because unless you know what class of compounds you are looking for there is no way to quickly find a structural class without thumbing through every page, as there is no index/table of contents to guide you to a particular class of compounds quickly. Also another minor drawback is the labeling of the structural classes. The titles are sometimes small and buried in between structures, which sometimes allows them to be missed. In a future version it © 2016 American Chemical Society and American Society of Pharmacognosy
Benjamin Philmus
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Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, United States
AUTHOR INFORMATION
Notes
The author declares no competing financial interest.
Published: November 2, 2016 2982
DOI: 10.1021/acs.jnatprod.6b00974 J. Nat. Prod. 2016, 79, 2982−2982
