Abstract
Cembranoids are carbocyclic diterpenes comprising four isoprene units and are natural products with a parent skeleton consisting of a 14-membered ring. They have gained wide interest in recent years and are a major hotspot in the research of natural product chemistry. Since 1962, various tobacco cembranoid diterpenes have been identified. This review systematically discusses and summarises the excellent antimicrobial, insecticidal, cytotoxic and neuroprotective activities of tobacco cembranoid diterpenes. These compounds show potential to be developed as botanical fungicides, cytotoxic drugs and drugs for the treatment of human immunodeficiency virus, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and other neurodegenerative diseases. However, there are relatively few studies on the structure–activity relationship (SAR) of tobacco cembranoid diterpenes. Therefore, future studies should focus on their structural modification, SAR and biogenic relationships.
Highlights
Tobacco leaves have a variety of chemical components, many of which are bioactive [1,2,3].Cembranoids are macrocyclic diterpenes comprising four isoprene units bonded head-to-tail, and are natural products with a parent skeleton consisting of a 14-membered ring, three symmetrically distributed methyl groups and one isopropyl group; the cembranoid parent nucleus has a symmetry plane with an axis passing through C-1 and C-8 [4,5]
Cembranoid diterpenes are mainly present in the plants belonging to the genera Nicotiana and Pinus, and marine organisms [6], and they play a role in the continuous cropping obstacles of tobacco plants and the competitive survival of corals [4,7]
Studies on the excellent antimicrobial, insecticidal, cytotoxic and neuroprotective activities of tobacco cembranoid diterpenes have revealed that these compounds have the potential to be developed as botanical fungicides, cytotoxic drugs, as well as drugs for the treatment of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases
Summary
Tobacco leaves have a variety of chemical components, many of which are bioactive [1,2,3]. Since Roberts and Rowland [8] first identified the cembratrien-diol (CBT-diol, Figure 1) in tobacco, at least 89 cembranoid compounds [5,9] have been identified, including cembranoids, nor-cembranoids, seco-cembranoids, and cyclised cembranoids. Their functional groups include carbon–carbon double bonds and isopropyl, methyl, hydroxyl, hydroperoxyl, methoxy, epoxy and ketone groups. Reviews on the recent research progress on the bioactivity of tobacco cembranoid diterpenes have not been published.
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