Abstract
Species of Nicotiana grow naturally in different parts of the world and
have long been used both medicinally and recreationally by human societies. More
recently in our history, Nicotiana tabacum has attracted interest as one of the most
economically important industrial crops. Nicotiana species are frequently investigated for
their bioactive natural products, and the ecological role of their specialized metabolites
in responses to abiotic stress or biotic stress factors like pathogens and herbivores. The
interest of tobacco companies in genetic information as well as the success of a few wild tobacco species as experimental model
organisms have resulted in growing knowledge about the molecular biology and ecology of these plants and functional studies of
the plant’s natural products. Although a large number of reviews and books on biologically active natural products already exists,
mostly from N. tabacum, we focus our attention on the ecological roles and biological activity of natural products, versus products
from cured and processed material, in this Review. The studied compounds include alkaloids, aromatic compounds, flavonoids,
volatiles, sesquiterpenoids, diterpenes alcohols, and sugar esters from trichomes of the plants, and recently characterized acyclic
hydroxygeranyllinalool diterpene glycosides (HGL-DTGs). In this Review (1800s−2017), we describe the above-mentioned
classes of natural products, emphasizing their biological activities and functions as they have been determined either in bioassayguided
purification approaches or in bioassays with plants in which the expression of specific biosynthetic genes has been
genetically manipulated. Additionally, a review on the history, taxonomy, ecology, and medicinal application of different Nicotiana
species growing around the globe presented in this Review may be of interest for pharmacognosists, natural products, and
ecological chemists.
