Talk:Natural product

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[edit] Merge into secondary metabolite

Secondary metabolite and natural product are merely synonyms that are used interchangeably. It might also be a good idea to clean up this article and to remove most of the lead compounds. Cacycle 14:57, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

"Secondary metabolite" and "natural product" are hardly interchangeable, and no one who wishes to speak precisely uses them so. "Natural product" barely has any specific meaning at all (since absolutely anything, in one sense or another, can be regarded as a "natural product") while "secondary metabolite" is used in a fairly precise manner -- as, for instance, in the definition in the main article. The very fact that the term "secondary" is employed is enough to suggest a specific meaning (i.e., apart from "primary"), and "metabolite" is far more specific than "product". The term "secondary metabolite" has widespread, well-understood import within the scientific community, particularly within biology and its subset, ecology, and wary individuals should not allow its use, or their understanding of the term, to be diluted by those in the quack medicine or "natural products" industry. -- djx, May 2007

Actually, the term "natural product" in the context of chemistry and biology has this specific meaning and it is usually interchangeable with secondary metabolite. Cacycle 02:44, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

I strongly oppose a merge. Plenty of "natural products" are not secondary metabolites, e.g. peptides, hemes, lipids, sugars, hormones. The former term is sometimes erroneously used in biology as a synonym for the latter, but its proper place is in chemistry to distinguish man-made from organism-derived compounds. Keep this chemistry article separate from the other biology article. To avoid repetition, let's move everything about secondary metabolites to the biology article, keeping everything that's not a secondary metabolite here. I notice nobody's written much about these compounds in this article yet.Bendž|Ť 20:55, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

I also oppose a merge because not all natural products are secondary metabolites. However I see no reason to move all the secondary metabolites out because many secondary metabolites ARE natural products.KSVaughan2 21:41, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

You're right, the two articles have very different approaches anyway, so it shouldn't be neceassary. Bendž|Ť 08:46, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, but I have been working in this field and the term "natural products" in the context of chemistry and biology is almost always used synonymously with "secondary metabolite". Please note that this is a technical term that is not congruent with what a normal person would call "natural products". Just check Google for "natural.product.chemistry" and see what pops up - the vast majority is NOT about primary metabolites like "peptides, hemes, lipids, sugars, hormones".

But since this article is about drug discovery from secondary metabolites and not about natural products in general, it might be a good idea to rename it into something like Natural product research or Natural product drug discovery and to edit it accordingly. Cacycle 21:22, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Please keep in mind that this term is used in fields different from the one you have been working in. Not all researchers will understand or care about the definition of "natural products" or how it applies to "secondary metabolites". A merge is entirely unnecessary.Bosco911 19:27, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Maybe that's the solution. Looking at the contents of the Natural Products Research journal, there are certainly some primary products there. We can avoid overlap by including as little specific information about the products/metabolites themselves, but just describing the research, perhaps mainly ecological under secondary metabolites and mainly medicinal under natural products, with links to the same pages dedicated to individual compounds. Bendž|Ť 11:38, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

In organic synthesis, natural product means something like "interesting molecule discovered in a plant/bug/fish and that we want to try to synthesize". I believe these are generally secondary metabolites, but maybe there are some exceptions. --Itub 11:55, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Also bear in mind that secondary meatabolites are/were usually so-called because of a lack of an obvious requirement for the producing organisms survival. This makes the term 'secondary' rather subjective, particularly when considering differing environmental conditions where the metabolite in question might well be essential for survival. MDG38 11:51, 8 November 2007 (UTC)