Caithness Biotechnologies: Innate immunity research and drug discovery

Please click here to download a beginner's guide to how to set up a basic screening assay using the Phytotitre library.

If you are new to natural product research and would like some basic tips and protocols to begin separation of your hit extracts and identify active compounds, please click here to view some basic principles and outline methods.

Silica gel chromatography is a simple and inexpensive option for the first step in the separation of biologically active compounds from natural products. Please click here to view a simple silica gel chromatography method.

The list below collates links to several of the many online resources available for those seeking to perform natural product screens and identify bioactive phytochemicals.

OMICtools offers a useful list of links to natural product databases.
http://omictools.com/natural-products-category

The Dictionary of Natural Products Online includes information on all compounds contained in the Dictionary of Natural Products.
http://dnp.chemnetbase.com/intro/

Chem-TCM is a digital database of individual phytochemicals of plants used in the traditional Chinese herbal medicine.
http://www.chemtcm.com/

Super Natural II is a natural product database with information on 325,508 compounds.
http://bioinf-applied.charite.de/supernatural_new/index.php

The Metlin database for metabolite identification offers a very simple m/z based search option.
https://metlin.scripps.edu/metabo_search_alt2.php

Universal Natural Product Database collates information on 197,201 3D structures.
http://pkuxxj.pku.edu.cn/UNPD/

This Youtube recording, presented by Drs Jim Wells and Michelle Arkin of UCSF, introduces the major concepts of library screening for beginners.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQKppAAR3ME

This article provides a good example of the steps involved in compound separation by HPLC, and subsequent structural identification: Shibata T. et al J Biol Chem 289:32757-72 (2014)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4239626/