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Updated: Jan 20, 2026

Author Spotlight: Discovering New Alkaloids in Plants with Advanced Mass Spectrometry Techniques
Published on: March 8, 2024
Alkaloid Enantiomers from the Roots of Isatis indigotica
Dongdong Zhang1, Yanhong Shi2, Rui Xu1
1School of Pharmacy, Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shanghai 201203, China.
Abstract:
Five pairs of alkaloid enantiomers (1a/1b-5a/5b) were obtained from Isatis indigotica (I. indigotica) roots. Among them, 1a/1b, 2a/2b and 3a/3b were determined as three pairs of new alkaloid enantiomers. Their structures were elucidated by physicochemical properties and spectroscopic methods. The absolute configurations were deduced by comparison of their experimental circular dichroism (CD) and calculated electronic circular dichroism (ECD) spectra, as well as by single-crystal X-ray crystallography using anomalous scattering of Cu Kα radiation. Alkaloids 1a and 1b possess an unpresented carbon skeleton and their putative biosynthetic pathways are discussed. Moreover, all of the alkaloids were tested for their nitric oxide (NO) inhibitory effects in RAW 264.7 cells, and 4a and 4b showed inhibitory effects with IC50 values of 76.97 μM and 65.88 μM, respectively.
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