Defining the limits of plant chemical space: challenges and estimations.

ABSTRACT: The plant kingdom, encompassing nearly 400,000 known species, produces an immense diversity of metabolites, including primary compounds essential for survival and secondary metabolites specialized for ecological interactions. These metabolites constitute a vast and complex phytochemical space with significant potential applications in medicine, agriculture, and biotechnology. However, much of this chemical diversity remains unexplored, as only a fraction of plant species has been studied comprehensively. In this work, we estimate the size of the plant chemical space by leveraging large-scale metabolomics and literature datasets. We begin by examining the known chemical space, which, while containing at most several hundred thousand unique compounds, remains sparsely covered. Using data fro

SUBMITTER: Hart CE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11970369 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature