Natural Products Chemistry
A natural product, in the broadest sense, is anything that is produced by life, including biotic materials (such as wood and silk), bio-based materials (such as bio plastics and corn starch), bodily fluids (such as milk and plant exudates), and other natural materials that were once found in living organisms (e.g., soil, coal). Any organic substance generated by a living organism is a more stringent definition of a natural product. Natural goods have a high structural diversity and distinctive pharmacological or biological actions as a result of hundreds of thousands of years of natural selection and evolutionary processes that have influenced their utility. Analytical Characterization of Natural Products