Plants have provided and continue to provide the inspiration and foundation for modern medicines. Natural product isolation is a key component of the process of drug discovery from plants. This study utilized steam distillation and liquid phase extraction to isolate three medicinally relevant molecules. To this end, thymol was isolated from thyme (Thymus vulgaris), citral from lemongrass (Cymbopogen), and camphor from sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata). Despite dissimilarities in structure and physical properties, each isolated molecule has a unifying biosynthetic origin in the plant that it is derived from.

Natural product isolation of thymol, camphor, and citral: Monoterpenes sharing a unified biosynthetic precursor

248th National Meeting (2014)

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