Hans Zauner

**Plants are full of biochemical potential. Today in *GigaScience,* we
publish an article that presents a searchable library of spectra and
molecules found in a collection of 1,600 plant extracts. This open
resource will be useful for research ranging from drug discovery to the
large-scale exploration of plants' chemical diversity** **(Read and
share the article [here](https://doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/giac124)
and the press release
[here](https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/976904))**.

Plant metabolites can have potent biological activities. For example,
the anti-malarial artemisinin or the anti-cancer drug taxol have both
been discovered as natural products. Sometimes, a plant compound is also
the starting point for a research & development process, and the drug
that comes out in the end is derived from raw material that was provided
by nature.

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srcset="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/plant.jpg 922w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/plant-300x257.jpg 300w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/plant-768x657.jpg 768w"
sizes="(max-width: 536px) 100vw, 536px" width="536" height="460" />
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### One of the largest collections of plant extracts in the world {#one-of-the-largest-collections-of-plant-extracts-in-the-world .wp-block-heading}

With the potential of plant metabolites in mind, Pierre Fabre
Laboratories, a French pharmaceutical and cosmetics company, constituted
a collection of botanical samples over the years 1995 to 2015. This
collection is one of the largest private plant libraries in the world.
It contains over 17,000 unique samples, including some rare species and
covering a diverse range of botanical families. Since 2015, Pierre Fabre
Laboratories have opened access to their private plant samples
collection for interested partners.

[The new study published in
*GigaScience*](https://doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/giac124) reports the
chemical characterization of around 10% of the plant extracts in the
Pierre Fabre Laboratories collection. This is an important step towards
making the chemical diversity of the full collection accessible to
researchers around the world.

### Open data {#open-data .wp-block-heading}

The researchers at the University of Geneva used high-resolution mass
spectrometry combined with advanced computational pipelines to acquire
over two million spectra and associated chemical information. The data
are now publicly available (The mass spectrometry profiles and
associated metadata through the [MassIVE
repository](https://massive.ucsd.edu/ProteoSAFe/static/massive.jsp),
accession number MSV000087728; supporting data are also available via
the [GigaScience database GigaDB](http://dx.doi.org/10.5524/102323)).

### An exceptional resource {#an-exceptional-resource .wp-block-heading}

The Data Note provides demonstrations on how to query this extensive
curated resource and shares both the resulting data and the employed
methods. In summary, this is an exceptional resource for advancing the
field of large-scale chemodiversity digitization and also an example of
a fruitful partnership between academia and industry.

**Read the GigaScience article:**

Pierre-Marie Allard, Arnaud Gaudry, Luis-Manuel Quirós-Guerrero, Adriano
Rutz, Miwa Dounoue-Kubo, Tom W N Walker, Emmanuel Defossez, Christophe
Long, Antonio Grondin, Bruno David, Jean-Luc Wolfender **Open and
reusable annotated mass spectrometry dataset of a chemodiverse
collection of 1,600 plant extracts**, *GigaScience* 2023
giac124, <https://doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/giac124>

**Read and share the Press Release:**

<https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/976904>

**Supporting data in GigaDB:**

<http://dx.doi.org/10.5524/102323>

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secrets](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/1600-plant-extracts/){rel="nofollow"}
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<strong>
 Plants are full of biochemical potential. Today in
 <em>
  GigaScience,
 </em>
 we publish an article that presents a searchable library of spectra and molecules found in a collection of 1,600 plant extracts.
</strong>

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

1,600 plant extracts reveal their secrets