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Essay on Secondary Metabolites & their Use among Alkaloids
Alkaloids: An Introduction
Alkaloids are a class of "secondary" plant metabolites that usually have been classified as basic compounds derived from amino acids that contain one or more heterocyclic nitrogen atoms. Although this definition holds for most known alkaloids recently any N containing secondary compound is considered an alkaloid if it cannot readily be classified otherwise i.e. not an amine, cyanogenic glycoside, glucosinolate, etc. The word alkaloid is derived from the Arabic al-qali, a plant from which soda was 1st isolated. The original definition for alkaloids is pharmacologically active, N-containing basic compounds of plant origin. Humans have been using alkaloids in the form of plant extracts for poisons, narcotics, stimulants and medicines for at least the past several thousand years. Morphine was isolated from poppy seeds in 1806 although its structure wasn't known until 1952. The anti-malarial properties of quinine, an alkaloid extracted from the bark of Cinchona spp. trees indigenous to the high eastern slopes of the Andes Mountains have long been known. More than 10,000 alkaloids of widely differing structures are now known from the small fraction of the planet's plants that have so far been examined. Most medicinal compounds have traditionally been extracted from plant tissues although modern synthetic chemistry has attempted to synthesize all-important medicinal compounds. Still 25% of compounds used in western medicine are plant-derived and most are still derived from plants in long-established medicine. Recent advances in plant genetic engineering are likely to make plants the preferred source of many medicinal compounds again in the future with "Pharming" developments.
Like many secondary metabolites, plants in fact synthesize alkaloids for defensive purposes. Nicotine and derivatives are among the earliest known and most potent insecticides. Some plant had already developed the ability to synthesize alkaloids at the beginning of angiosperm evolution 200 million years ago. Like most natural product chemistry, the accumulation..............
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