Fluorine-containing natural products

It is now more than 50 years since the first fluorinated natural product wa s identified. In that time only about a dozen fluorinated natural products have been isolated, the last one over a decade ago. Very little is known ab out the mechanism of biological fluorination although significant progress has been made in elucidating the pathway by which biosynthesis of fluoroace tate and 4-fluorothreonine occurs in the bacterium Streptomyces cattleya. I n this article we review the fluorinated natural products and the current s tatus of our understanding of fluorometabolite biosynthesis. (C) 1999 Elsev ier Science S.A. All rights reserved.