Secondary Metabolites from Bolivian Plants- Isolation and Characterization

Abstract: Nature has been recognized as a rich source of potentially useful chemicals. Throughout the years, phytochemical studies have led to the discovery of an enormous number of natural products, their chemical diversity is unique and many of them possess various biological activities. As a contribution, this thesis presents the results obtained from the phytochemical study of four Bolivian plants. Senecio clivicolus, Prumnopitys exigua, Baccharis polycephala and Podocarpus parlatorei, which all are species that grow naturally in Bolivia. The study is based on the isolation, purification and spectroscopic characterization of secondary metabolites. To achieve this, various chromatographic methods have been applied to the crude plant extracts in order to fractionate them to the point that pure compounds are obtained. Once a natural product is isolated, it was subjected to high-resolution mass spectrometry to determine its elemental composition and NMR spectroscopy to elucidate the molecular structure.