Natural Peroxides from Plants: Historical Discovery, Biosynthesis, and Biological Activities

Abstract

Naturally occurring peroxides received great interest and attention from scientific research groups worldwide due to their structural diversity, versatile biological activities, and pharmaceutical properties. In the present review, we describe the historical discovery of natural peroxides from plants systematically and update the researchers with recently explored ones justifying their structural caterogrization and biological/pharmaceutical properties intensively. Till the end of 2023, 192 peroxy natural products from plants were documented herein for the first time implying most categories of natural scaffolds (e.g. terpenes, polyketides, phenolics and alkaloids). Numerically, the reported plants’ peroxides have been classified into seventy‐four hydro‐peroxides, hundred seven endo‐peroxides and eleven acyl‐peroxides. Endo‐peroxides (cyclic alkyl peroxides) are an important group due to their high variety of structural frameworks, and we have further divided them into “four‐, five‐, six and seven”‐membered rings. Biosynthetically, a shedding light on the intricate mechanisms behind the formation of plant‐derived peroxides are addressed as well.