Cheminformatics survey catalogs 13,132 marine terpenoids
Review maps bioactivity annotations and distinguishes marine vs terrestrial chemical space
Chinese Journal of Natural Medicines
Marine terpenoids constitute a structurally diverse class of natural products produced by marine organisms, with roles in ecological interactions and chemical defense and with reported pharmacological activities. However, systematic cross-source integration of structures, organismal origins, and bioactivity annotations remains challenging because the literature is dispersed and datasets are often incomplete or inconsistently curated.
In a review published in the Chinese Journal of Natural Medicines, the authors consolidate the current landscape of marine terpenoids and provide a perspective on how cheminformatics can enable large-scale organization and analysis of marine natural-product resources. Based on compiled reports, the review catalogs 13,132 marine terpenoids, including 2,066 compounds with documented biological activities, and summarizes their biological sources, molecular scaffolds, and associated activity profiles. By presenting these elements in a unified framework, the authors aim to support downstream tasks such as scaffold prioritization, hypothesis generation, and comparative natural-product analysis across taxa and environments.
A central contribution is the application of cheminformatics to compare the chemical space of marine versus terrestrial terpenoids. The review reports that marine terpenoids exhibit structural distinctiveness relative to terrestrial counterparts, reinforcing the premise that marine systems can expand accessible terpene scaffold diversity beyond what is typically observed in land-derived natural products.
Finally, the authors discuss forward directions to facilitate discovery, utilization, and synthesis of marine terpenoids, emphasizing approaches that could promote more comprehensive and sustainable exploration of these marine resources while improving the translational efficiency from structural novelty to practical applications.
Full article is available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1875536425000263
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