We would like to invite you to contribute a paper for publication in the Special Issue
“Natural Product Pre-fractionation”of Molecules (http://www.mdpi.org/molecules).
Both comprehensive review articles and full research papers are invited.

Natural products provide an unparalleled source of chemical diversity for discovery
of important and interesting biologically active molecules.  This bounty comes at a price,
since crude extracts of natural products can be difficult to screen in bioassays, and
must be fractionated with guidance from the bioassay to obtain pure compounds.
If the active compounds are present in trace amounts this can become a very difficult
and time-consuming process, or the activity may be missed altogether. Numerous
companies and academic groups have therefore sought to remedy these problems
by chromatographically separating the extract to various degrees of resolution.
This issue will examine a spectrum of different approaches and provide details on
the technical challenges involved, the costs, and the rewards in improved identification
of novel natural products.

This thematic special issue will be fully Open Access with publishing fees paid by authors.
Open Access (unlimited access by readers) increases publicity and promotes more
frequent citations as indicated by several studies. More information is available
at http://www.mdpi.org/oaj-supports.htm.

You may send your manuscript soon or by 30 May 2008. Papers accepted will
be published immediately. Finally, all the papers belonging to this special issue
will be gathered together in a homepage. Therefore, you may submit your paper
now. The time taken between submission and publication is less than 1 month now.

For review papers, the title and a short abstract can be sent to [email protected]
(copy to Dr. John A. Beutler, E-mail: [email protected])
as soon as possible.

Molecules  maintains a rigorous and fast peer-review system. Accepted papers
are immediately published online. Well written papers have been peer reviewed
and published in less than two weeks from manuscript submission, see the example:
http://www.mdpi.org/molecules/papers/11040212.pdf.

Please send your paper by e-mail to [email protected]. The subject title of the
message should be "Manuscript for Special Issue "Natural Product Pre-fractionation".

Dr. John A. Beutler
E-mail: [email protected]