[cvengo]

Hi folks, I would like to ask, what is the simplest way to search for a natural product of a certain structure. Imagine you have developed a synthetic approach towards a certain structural motif and you'd like to find a natural product which is similar.
thanks

[sjb]

Probably easiest (if not best) is to look through things like the Journal of Natural Products (http://pubs.acs.org/journals/jnprdf/index.html) or similar, or perhaps plug your motif into Scifinder and see what happens.

[movies]

I like Beilstein for this, personally.  Draw in your structure and then set the atoms you could substitute to max substitutions ("star" them) and then search for things that have a field called "INP" which stands for "isolation from natural product."  You can also search for things with the field "PHARM" which means pharmacological data is available.