https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13321-025-01116-y

https://www.cas.cn/syky/202511/t20251124_5089601.shtml

The CAS Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry has released a Natural Product and Biological Source Mapping Database. NPBS Atlas is an open natural product data resource, containing over 210,000 known natural products. It aims to break down information barriers between natural products and their biological sources, thereby creating a complete map of the relationship between natural products and their biological sources. This helps researchers explore the chemical diversity of nature from ecological, taxonomic, and traditional medical perspectives.

In the NPBS Atlas database, plants account for 67% of the total, confirming their historical role in traditional drug utilization. 3520 natural products coexist in plants and fungi, revealing cross-species metabolic similarities, possibly stemming from convergent evolution or ecological interactions. Among animal-derived natural products, marine ecosystems contribute a high percentage (77%), with sponges showing outstanding performance, demonstrating the unique evolution of chemical defense mechanisms in marine organisms. From an application perspective, 53% of plant-derived natural products are clearly associated with traditional Chinese medicine, providing important resources for the modernization of TCM research. Fungal-derived compounds performed well in drug-likeness assessments, with over half meeting the drug-likeness standard (QED>0.5), demonstrating significant development potential. Bacterial-derived natural products have higher structural complexity (SA Score>5), but their bioactivity annotation rate ranks first (17%), covering multiple activities such as anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and immunomodulatory activities, providing a rich pool of candidate molecules for innovative drug development.