Scenario In the search for valuable organic molecules found in nature, the isolation and identification of natural products (also known as bioprospecting) has been an essential source of new drug leads and potential therapeutic agents. In fact, it was estimated that ~75% of all approved small molecule pharmaceutical drugs between 1981 and 2014 were either sourced, or inspired, by natural products.1 Imagine you are a graduate researcher, working in a small team whose aim is to investigate natural product leads. You were recently recommended to look into the endemic Australian plant species Correa reflexa (C. reflexa) due to compounds of interest (coumarins) being found in Correa species, C. alba and C. backhouseana. It is hypothesised that two compounds of interest may be present in isolatable yields from C. reflexa: seselin (pictured left) and (+)-epoxysuberosin (pictured right): – pics in files The methods for natural product extraction and characterization are diverse, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. For this task, you will need to describe how you would first extract the crude product from collected Correa reflexa plant matter, separate the crude product into the constituent compounds, and characterise these. Note: the focus here is the description of techniques, equipment and overall process. Further depth into specific volumes, ratios, temperatures, etc. are not required. You can use the prompts below to help you generate a 10-minute video (this is the limit, shorter videos are perfectly acceptable) to outline your procedure. Prompts: How are you going to get the compounds out of the plant material? (Techniques, equipment) How will you monitor this extraction? (Hint: Coumarin peaks are distinctive in NMR spectroscopy) How will you separate the compounds you’re interested in from the rest of the crude material? What data will you need to collect to characterize (identify) its structure? How is this data collected? What calculations/observations will you use to compare the profile of these compounds found in C. reflexa to the profile of C. alba and C. backhouseana?

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