A new fungal metabolite named sespendole was isolated as an inhibitor of lipid droplet synthesis in mouse macrophages from the culture broth of the fungal strain Pseudobotrytis terrestris FKA-25. The structure and stereochemistry of sespendole were elucidated by spectroscopic studies including various NMR spectral analyses, exciton chirality experiments and the modified Mosher method. Sespendole was found to possess a new indolosesquiterpene skeleton modified with two isoprenes.Keywords sespendole, indolosesquiterpene, fungal metabolites, structure elucidation Introduction Sespendole (1, Fig. 1) produced by Pseudobotrytis terrestris FKA-25 [1] is a potent inhibitor of lipid droplet synthesis in macrophages. The fermentation, isolation and biological activities of 1 were described previously [2].In this report, we describe the structure elucidation of 1 and show that 1 possesses an indolosesquiterpene core with two additional isoprenyl side chains. A number of indoloditerpenes have been reported from fungi [3], such as paspalicine [4], paxilline [5,6], janthitrems [7,8]
Results and Discussion
Physico-chemical PropertiesThe physico-chemical properties of 1 are summarized in Table 1. Compound 1 is a colorless amorphous solid, and is soluble in chloroform, methanol, acetone and ethyl acetate. The molecular formula was revealed to be C 33 H 45 NO 4 by HR-EI-MS (m/z 519.3339; calcd. 519.3349). The UV spectrum exhibited characteristic absorption maxima at 239 and 288 nm in methanol, suggesting the presence of an indole moiety in the structure. The IR spectrum showed -OH and/or -NH absorption at 3426 cm Ϫ1 and carbonyl absorption at 1693 cm
Ϫ1.
Structure of SespendoleThe 1 H and 13 C NMR spectra of 1 showed 45 protons and 33 carbons in pyridine-d 5 as shown in Table 2. The carbon signals were classified into 8 methyl, 6 methylene, 6 methine, and 13 quaternary carbons by analysis of the