Biotransformation of sesquiterpenoids: a recent insight

Abstract

Sesquiterpenoids have been identified as natural compounds showing remarkable biological activities found in medicinal plants. There is great interest in developing methods to obtain sesquiterpenoids derivatives and biotransformation is one of the alternative methods for structural modification of complex sesquiterpenes structures. Biotransformation is a great drug design tool offering high selectivity and green method. The present review describes a comprehensive summary of biotransformation products of sesquiterpenoids and its structural modification utilizing a variety of biocatalysts including microorganisms, plant tissue culture and enzymes. This review covers recent literatures from 2007 until 2020 and highlights the experimental conditions for each biotransformation process.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords:

• Biotransformation
• sesquiterpenoids
• biocatalysts
• drug-design

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was financially supported by funding from Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) Malaysia through Fundamental Grant Scheme FRGS19-029-0637 (FRGS/1/2018/STG01/UIAM/03/3).