Natural Products: Isolation, Identification and Biological Activity II

Dear Colleagues,

Natural products have been used for treatment and alleviate various diseases since early human history. One of the notable sources of natural products is medicinal plants. A number of phytochemicals such as polyphenols, carotenoids, polysaccharides, volatile oils, alkaloids and many others are responsible for their pharmacological properties. It is well established that these activities are associated with the great number of secondary metabolites produced by plants to adapt themselves to the environment. Natural products are still a beneficial source to obtain and isolate compounds with pharmacological applications or can also be used as herbal medicinal products in traditional or complementary medicine.

However, after years of research in this field and in spite of the remarkable recent advances in chemical synthesis, natural products remain the most powerful and somewhat under-investigated source of bioactive compounds. There are still many species of plants tthat have still not been screened for pharmacological application and might be a cause for a breakthrough in science. Therefore, more investigations should be done in various species of plants and other natural products. Currently, the most important directions are develop effective and selective methods for the isolation of bioactive compounds from natural products, the identification and quantification of those compounds, and in vitro and then in vivo investigations on their biological activity.

Despite significant progress in sample preparation and separation techniques, the isolation and identification of natural products from natural products and investigations on their biological activity are still are difficult and important tasks.

The papers include coverage of work on natural substances of the land and sea and of plants, microbes, and animals. Investigations on isolation, identification, structure elucidation and various biological activities are welcomed in this Special Issue.

We cordially invite researchers working in this field to contribute original research articles, short communications, and critical review articles.

Prof. Dr. Anna Petruczynik
Prof. Dr. Tomasz Tuzimski
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Molecules is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• plant extracts
• isolation of active compounds from natural products
• analysis of natural products
• identyfication and quantification of natural products components
• determination of biological activity