Meroterpenoids? A historical and critical review of this biogenetic determinant

Abstract

In its original definition, meroterpenoids refer to substances of mixed biosynthesis including a terpenoid part. The number of compounds fulfilling this criterion is huge, and almost from the beginning, exclusions were made, more or less, explicitly stated. The concept is well accepted in the microorganism domain, where biosynthetic studies are advanced, while in the plant domain, meroterpenes and meroterpenoids randomly appear. The purpose of this article is to present and discuss miscellaneous categories of products that fulfill the definition and should be considered as meroterpenoids. Our proposal would be to retain the concept to characterize biosynthetic origins and not to consider it as a tool for classification.