Nat-UV DB: A Natural Products Database Underlying of Veracruz-Mexico
Edgar López-López1,2, Ana Margarita Hernández-Segura3, Carlos Lara-Cuellar3
1Department of Chemistry and Graduate Program in Pharmacology, Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute, Mexico City, Mexico City, 07000, Mexico.
Background:
Natural products databases are well-structured data sources that offer new molecular development opportunities in drug discovery, agrochemistry, food, cosmetics, and several other research disciplines or chemical industries. The crescent world's interest in the development of these databases is related to the exploration of chemical diversity in geographical regions with rich biodiversity.
Methods:
In this work, we introduce and discuss Nat-UV DB, the first natural products database from a coastal zone of Mexico. We discuss its construction, curation, and chemoinformatic characterization of their content, and chemical space coverage compared with other compound databases, like approved drugs, and other Mexican (BIOFACQUIM and UNIIQUIM databases) and the Latin American natural products database (LaNAPDB).
Results:
Nat-UV DB comprises 227 compounds that contain 112 scaffolds, of which 52 are not present in previous natural product databases. The compounds present in Nat-UV DB have a similar size, flexibility, and polarity to previously reported natural products and approved drug datasets.
Conclusions:
Nat-UV DB compounds have a higher structural and scaffold diversity than the approved drugs, but they have low structural and scaffold diversity in contrast with other natural products in the reference datasets. This database serves as a valuable addition to the global natural products landscape, bridging gaps in exploring biodiversity-rich regions.
