In addition, information on known natural products chemistry must be considered in an effort to contain the costs of follow-on studies. Dereplication against the growing number of known chemical compounds is becoming increasingly important for discovery screens. Laboratory chemists are at a tremendous advantage when they can generate a list of possible chemical structures to compare with an extract containing unknown compounds. A chemist can then quickly evaluate the possibility for the presence of known compounds and will be able to make an informed decision regarding the interest in the extract as a source of novel bioactive compounds. This rapid process can save the costs of follow-on isolation and structural elucidation studies and increase a program's efficiency.
General information handling system requirements are recollection and dereplication.
The latitude-longitude location of a source organism collection can be easily obtained using satellite navigation technologies and placed on a map. The position of past collections can be similarly mapped, however, the accuracy of these data will vary. Using a comprehensive dataset of natural products chemical discoveries within a GIS would allow investigators to easily visualize the spatial relationships between collection points to support decisions. Furthermore, expeditions for new acquisition efforts could effectively be planned to target specific regions based on existing information, and to avoid duplicating past collections. One of the most powerful features of a comprehensive information management system that supports natural products acquisition programs is use of spatial data and GIS technology.