In silico comparison of marine, terrestrial and synthetic compounds using ChemGPS-NP for navigating chemical space

Nature represents a vast source of chemical diversity, which is supposed to cover broader areas of chemical space than synthetically obtained substances typical of medicinal chemistry. With regard to drug discovery from nature, the terrestrial environment has been the most and longest studied source, while the investigation of compounds produced by marine organisms is still in its infancy. With the objective of demonstrating the enormous chemical diversity of nature, in particular that of the marine environment, we used the chemical space navigation tool ChemGPS-NP to compare sets of marine, terrestrial and synthetic compounds with respect to physico-chemical properties and their occupation of the biologically relevant chemical space. Despite considerable overlap, the three datasets clearly differ from each other by occupying and extending into different, specific, regions in chemical space. Synthetic compounds are e.g. comparably small, with some of them being highly flexible, while marine and terrestrial products are larger and characterised by higher and lower molecular flexibility, respectively, with increasing size. Moreover, the three datasets differ to some degree in polarity, aromaticity and heteroatom content. Taken together, ChemGPS-NP has been proven to be a useful tool for navigating large volumes of biologically relevant chemical space. In this study we demonstrated the chemical uniqueness and differences of large sets of natural products, with particular emphasis on marine substances. The hence de-veiled differences further underline the relevance of natural products, of both marine and terrester origin, for future drug discovery.