Nanomole-scale natural products discovery.

The discovery and structure elucidation of natural products has advanced through significant developments in spectroscopic techniques, particularly nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). Improvements in microprobe, microcoil and cryoprobe designs have increased NMR sensitivity by 20-fold over instruments that were available just 10 years ago. The era for the exploration of rare natural products at the 'nanomole-scale' has arrived. This review surveys the development of spectroscopic methods and presents case studies of natural product structure elucidation using extremely small samples. The road to the future of natural product discovery is lined with exciting possibilities that will take advantage of developments already reported, as well as those yet to come.