Exploring the known chemical space of the plant kingdom: insights into taxonomic patterns, knowledge gaps, and bioactive regions.

ABSTRACT: Plants are one of the primary sources of natural products for drug development. However, despite centuries of research, only a limited region of the phytochemical space has been studied. To understand the scope of what is explored versus unexplored in the phytochemical space, we begin by reconstructing the known chemical space of the plant kingdom, mapping the distribution of secondary metabolites, chemical classes, and plants traditionally used for medicinal purposes (i.e., medicinal plants) across various levels of the taxonomy. We identify hotspot taxonomic clades occupied by a large proportion of medicinal plants and characterized secondary metabolites, as well as clades requiring further characterization with regard to their chemical composition. In a complementary analysis, we build

SUBMITTER: Domingo-Fernandez D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10636812 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature