ABSTRACT
Plant natural products are frequently chiral, the word being derived from the Greek “chir ” for hand. Comprehensive phytochemical or natural product investigations of vascular plants leading to full structure determinations of isolated constituents requires the application of a number of interlocking physico-chemical techniques. Moreover, whereas Electronic Circular Dichroism (ECD) data interpretation was earlier stifled by reliance on empirical rules that were often misinterpreted, the advent of density functional chemistry computational methods that permit the comparison of experimental and calculated ECD spectra has greatly decreased such reliance. It additionally led to a significant growth in vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) spectroscopy applications, with VCD offering the advantage over ECD in that it also applies to molecules devoid of a chromophore. Oligomeric lignans are well known to be deposited in various lignified cell types to help confer stability and durability against opportunistic pathogens.
