Plants make chemical weapons to protect themselves, and many of these compounds have become vital to human medicine. Researchers found that one powerful plant chemical is produced using a gene that ...

In the realm of organic chemistry, one class of compounds has captured the scientific community's attention for decades - alkaloids. These naturally occurring compounds are known for their diverse ...

A step forward in our understanding of how plants produce alkaloids could herald new pharmaceuticals. Biologists from the University of York (UK) have discovered enzymes that catalyze the biosynthesis ...

Alkaloids, which include caffeine and morphine, are a large class of pharmacologically active plant compounds that are often difficult to chemically synthesize. Incorporation of benzylisoquinoline ...

Researchers report the first successful microbial biosynthesis of the tropane alkaloids hyoscyamine and scopolamine, a class of neuromuscular blockers naturally found in plants in the nightshade ...

Since the early 1800s, practitioners of organic chemistry have been fascinated with a group of plant-derived compounds called "alkaloids." Alkaloids contain at least one nitrogen atom among other ...

Ergot alkaloids are a diverse group of secondary metabolites produced predominantly by the parasitic fungus Claviceps purpurea. These compounds have long been a subject of scientific inquiry due to ...

Alkaloids are a diverse and fascinating group of naturally occurring compounds, most commonly derived from plants, that have played a significant role in medicine and daily life for centuries. Whether ...

A family of naturally occurring plant compounds could help prevent or delay memory loss associated with Alzheimer's disease, according to a new study. A family of naturally occurring plant compounds ...

With help from plant and human enzymes, yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) can now make certain pharmaceutically important alkaloids naturally produced by plants. Previous efforts to biosynthesize ...

A new metal–organic framework (MOF), APF-80, enables the crystalline sponge method to capture and analyze nucleophilic compounds. Alkaloids, a diverse group of biologically active compounds, usually ...