The need to develop and improve sustainable energy resources is of eminent importance due to the finite nature of our fossil fuels. This review paper deals with a third generation renewable energy resource which does not compete with our food resources, cyanobacteria. We discuss the current state of the art in developing different types of bioenergy (ethanol, biodiesel, hydrogen, etc.) from cyanobacteria. The major important biochemical pathways in cyanobacteria are highlighted, and the possibility to influence these pathways to improve the production of specific types of energy forms the major part of this review.

Introduction !Plants have been used throughout history as the primary source of food, timber, fuel, and medicine, among other purposes. Due to their amazing ability to produce a vast structural array of chemical components, of which only relatively few have been identified, plants are one of the most important sources for the development of new drugs. Today plants, plant extracts and plant-derived components are being used in a multitude of herbal remedies and phytopharmaceuticals. Well-known plants which are used to treat specific diseases include Artemisia annua (to treat uncomplicated malaria) [1] and the female flowering tops of Cannabis sativa (to relieve pain and as an appetite enhancer) [2]. A multitude of examples exists for the use of plant extracts to treat a large array of diseases and the WHO estimates that about 80% of the world population uses medicinal plants as their primary source of medication. Many well-known drugs have also been isolated from plants including artemisinin from A. annua, paclitaxel from Taxus brevifolia, vinblastine and vincristine from Catharanthus roseus and galanthamine from the Amaryllidaceae family. In the literature three terms are used to describe the analysis of metabolites produced by plants.These terms, notably metabolic profiling, metabolic fingerprinting and metabolomics are sometimes used interchangeably. It is not our intention to give a formal definition of metabolomics. For a formal definition and discussion [3,4] should be consulted. A very simplistic view is that metabolomics can be seen in two different ways. Firstly there is the microscopic view (targeted approach) which looks at a specific set of compounds (e.g., phenolics or terpenoids, etc). This approach is also called metabolic fingerprinting or metabolic profiling. The second view is the macroscopic view (untargeted approach) which aims at identifying and quantifying all the metabolites present in a specific organism [3]. Metabolomics is therefore a "systematic study of the unique chemical fingerprints that specific cellular processes leave behind" -and, more specifically, the study of their small-molecule metabolite profiles [5]. The metabolome represents the collection of all metabolites in a biological organism, which are the end products of its gene expression. Thus, while mRNA gene expression data and proteomic analyses do not tell the whole story of what might be happening in a cell, metabolic fingerprinting can give an instantaneous snapshot of the physiology of that cell. One of the challenges of systems biology is to integrate proteomic, transcriptomic, and Abstract !Metabolic fingerprinting techniques have received a lot of attention in recent years and the annual amount of publications in this field has increased significantly over the past decade. This increase in publications is due to improvements in the analytical performance, most notably in the field of NMR and MS analysis, and the increased awareness of the different applications of this growing field. Metabolomic fingerprinting or pr...

The naphthoquinone 7-methyljuglone (5-hydroxy-7-methyl-1,4-naphthoquinone) has previously been isolated and identified as an active component of root extracts of Euclea natalensis which displays antitubercular activity. Herein, a series of synthetic and plantderived naphthoquinone derivates of the 7-methyljuglone scaffold have been prepared and evaluated for antibacterial activity against Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Several of these compounds have been shown to operate as subversive substrates with mycothiol disulfide reductase. The absence of a direct correlation between antitubercular activity and subversive substrate efficiency with mycothiol disulfide reductase, might be a consequence of their non-specific reactivity with multiple biological targets (e.g. other disulfide reductases). openUP (December 2007) Graphical abstractArticle Outline

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