Natural products against pathogenic microorganisms and infectious diseases: an overview of their sources, compounds and chemical diversity

Recently, SCIENCE CHINA Life Sciences ("Chinese Science: Life Sciences" in English) published an online review titled "Natural products for infectious microbes and diseases: an overview of sources, compounds, and chemical diversities".
The research team of the researcher Chen Shilin of the Institute has completed the writing, and the first author is Luo Lu
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As the outbreak of new coronary pneumonia since 2019 continues to threaten global human health, infectious diseases have become one of the most challenging problems in the medical field
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Natural products have a wide range of structural differences and diverse biological activities, and are one of the rich sources of antibiotics
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The review systematically sorted out the 618 articles retrieved from the existing literature from 646 natural products from 672 species.
These compounds have biological activity against 21 pathogenic microorganisms from five categories
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The 268 natural products with clear chemical structures were divided into 10 groups according to their chemical structures, and network pharmacological analysis was used to screen the most potential lead compounds, such as Agelasine D, dicumarol, and dihydroartemisinin (Dihydroartemisinin) and pyridomycin (pyridomycin) and so on
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The distribution of the maximum Tanimoto score shows that anti-parasitic natural products show lower diversity, while anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and anti-viral chemicals show more structural diversity
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Among them, 331 kinds of medicinal plants with active compounds against pathogenic microorganisms were selected to classify the family sources
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Compositae plants (family Asteraceae) have a variety of compounds against C.
neoformans, and most natural products derived from family Anacardiaceae have biological activity against Salmonella typhi.
Cucurbitaceae ( The natural product derived from family Cucurbitacea has biological activity against human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), while the natural product derived from family Ancistrocladaceae has anti-Plasmodium activity and so on
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The review summarized the current available data on the treatment of refractory infectious diseases with natural product resistance drugs, and provided a basis for further discovery of resistance and synthesis of new natural products
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Figure 1 The classification of infectious diseases in traditional medicine and modern medicine
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On the left, the classification of infectious diseases in modern medicine is oriented towards pathogenic microorganisms, which usually include five categories: viruses, bacteria, fungi, parasites, chlamydia and mycoplasma
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Immune response can usually be explained by two opposite but cooperative systems, just like the concept of yin and yang in the basic theory of traditional medicine: immune initiation and response (yang), involving activators and effectors, such as T cells (Th1, Th17) , B cells, DC, Mφ, NK cells, NKG2D and IFN-γ; and immune regulation and tolerance (negative), managed by regulators and controllers, such as IL-10, NKG2A, Treg, Th2, Breg, DCreg and M2
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On the right, from the perspective of traditional medicine, the classification of infectious diseases is always symptom-oriented
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The occurrence of disease is due to the imbalance between righteous qi and evil qi
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The "Huangdi Neijing" divides the plague into five epidemics: cold, fever, laryngo, dysentery, and insect pests
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The recovery from the disease depends on the struggle between righteousness and evil
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The former serves as a defensive barrier and basically consists of four layers from the outside to the inside: guarding qi, qi, ying qi and blood
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Figure 2 Network of natural products and pathogenic microorganisms based on network pharmacology
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Compounds are mainly divided into ten categories, and pathogens are divided into five categories
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The green circles and red diamonds correspond to compounds and pathogenic microorganisms, respectively
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The size of each node is proportional to resistance
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The thickness and distance of the red line indicate the credibility of the supporting evidence
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Figure 3 Functional enrichment analysis of four types of compound targets: A baicalin (Baicalin); B emodin (Emodin); C berberin (Berberin); D quercetin (Quercetin)
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Each node in the figure represents a biological process, and each color represents a type of function
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Green circles indicate apoptosis-related signaling pathways, and purple circles indicate inflammation-related signaling pathways
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Figure 4 The maximum Tanimoto score curve for the chemical structure of the five types of pathogenic microorganisms.
Figure 5 Anti-(A) Cryptococcus neoformans, (B) Salmonellatyphi, (C) HIV and (D) Plasmodium (Plasmodium) phylogenetic tree analysis of the basic source species of known compounds (based on the chloroplast genome) This review provides a more comprehensive analysis of the published data on natural products against pathogenic microorganisms
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Emerging technologies such as genomics and synthetic biology are discovering and utilizing natural products and their lead compounds in new ways
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We are entering an exciting era in which the ancient wisdom extracted from the world's traditional herbs can be reinterpreted and used from the perspective of modern science, and the mystery of traditional medicines can be uncovered by modern methods
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This review screened five common types of pathogenic microorganisms, especially intractable infectious diseases, for a summary analysis
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Explains the current available data of natural product resistance drugs, and provides information for the further discovery and synthesis of drugs against pathogenic microorganisms
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For details of the research, please read the original text▼[click the link below or read the original text] Luo, L.
, Yang, J.
, Wang, C.
, Wu, J.
, Li, Y.
, Zhang, X.
, Li, H.
, Zhang , H.
, Zhou, Y.
, Lu, A.
, et al.
(2021).
Natural products for infectious microbes and diseases: an overview of sources, compounds, and chemical diversities.
Sci China Life Sci 64, https:// doi.
org/10.
1007/s11427-020-1959-5