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 ...

Stephacidin A and its congeners are a collection of secondary metabolites that possess intriguing structural motifs. They stem from unusual biosynthetic sequences that lead to the incorporation of a ...

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 ...

This video segment, adapted from NOVA uses reenactment footage to show how chemist Percy Julian completed the total synthesis of physostigmine, an alkaloid derived from the Calabar bean that could be ...